As many of you know, I'm not a beer drinker and Drew isn't a drinker at all, so Bavaria isn't the easiest place to be, filled as it is with biergartens. However, the Mosel Valley in Germany and Tirol in Austria have served me well in my love of wine. I'm in no way a connoisseur; I know very little about wine aside from what I like and dislike. For those who know wine (many of you as well) this might not be new information.
The first wine I've discovered on our trip is rotling, common in the Mosel valley. It's made of both red and white grapes and served chilled, but it's not a rosé; it has way more red in it than that. Very refreshing and entirely too drinkable. Good thing Germans bake excellent bread to soak it up.
The second is the zweigelt, an Austrian red wine that I think of as somewhere between a merlot and cabernet. It warms the body and soul on chilly Alpine nights (there are a lot of those here, so I have to drink a lot of it).
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Sarajevo Haggadah
Shopping in Old Town Sarajevo (Last Thursday Morning)
Sarajevo Photos
On Thursday morning before our midday departure from Sarajevo I had one mission: shopping in the old town. Michelle is a willing and able partner in this endeavor. We started in the rug shop opposite Morica Han and quickly lost Drew to wandering photography. We oohed and aahed over the rugs, which the family owners take trips all over the middle east to find. I found a Kurdish rug, which Michelle helpfully pointed out could easily be folded into my suitcase, and struck a deal on it. From there we went to the sweets and nuts shop, where I procured a box of assorted mystery treats for the folks back in the office (they might be slightly worse for the wear by the time they get to Berkeley, but they'll get there!). Then it was on to the tinsmith, where we admired hand-etched coffee sets with trays, all of which cost way more than I'd budgeted, so I ended up with the cheaper but still hand-crafted stamped plate. My final purchase was the must for any visitor to Sarajevo: spent bullets and rifle shells turned into key chains. So far they've made it through Bosnian airport security. We'll see about the Germans and Americans.
Quite satisfied with our shopping, we rounded up Drew in pigeon square and headed back home to pack and then were off to the airport, our short but busy and entirely worth-it trip to Bosnia complete.
Mostar (Last Wednesday)
Mostar Photos
We woke to more rain on Wednesday morning. Michelle optimistically suggested that once we drove out of the Bosnian hills into Herzegovina, we'd have lovely weather. With her instructions to make two rights and then just keep going, you can't miss it, we headed out alone in one of their cars to Mostar, which is over 100 kilometers away from Sarajevo.
The road to Mostar took us through beautiful green hills and eventually along the gorgeous Neretva River in a gorge to rival any in Tennessee (it actually reminded me quite a lot of home). We passed entire villages that had been torched during the war and were no longer inhabited. We resisted stopping at one of the many "Bosnian fast-food joints," as I termed them, which were basically little huts with a lamb-roasting spit. Marco swears by them but Michelle said they were a little too rustic; plus, we'd had the best lamb around the night before. All along the route were policemen at intervals, who would wave motorists to the side of the road with little stop signs on a stick that look like oversized lollipops. Our guidebook had informed us that they were usually just looking for coffee money and to play the dumb tourist if you get stopped, but fortunately our diplomatic plates kept us from ever getting pulled over.
It took us several hours to make the trip, despite the short distance, because the roads are narrow and not in the best shape. They're better than you might expect, since they started out pretty well thanks to Tito's infrastructure reinforcement agenda. We were pleased that the tunnels that we encountered had lighting, since we'd heard from our guidebook and Michelle that at one point none of them did. And these are long tunnels. Another fun thing is Bosnians' very confident but surprising driving style; they like doing things like passing on hairpin curves. I'm glad Drew was driving so that we didn't run off the road when I put my hands over my eyes.
Upon arrival in Mostar we crossed one of the several bridges, the original keepers of which (mostari) likely provided the town with its name. Like Sarajevo, Mostar was part of the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, and the architecture of the bridges and older buildings reflect that. Also like Sarajevo, Mostar was severely damaged by bombs during the war, although the brunt of the damage was on buildings, not civilians. The front line of the war became the river, which divided the Croatians from the Muslims (originally the conflict here was between the Serbs and the Bosnians/Croats, but then the Croats attacked the Bosnian Muslims). During the course of the war all of the bridges across the river were destroyed, including the Stari Most (Old Bridge), which is the bridge for which the city is famous. It was a great tragedy that it collapse, leading to a great triumph when it was reopened after being rebuilt in 2004.
After looping the town we parked just above the Stari Most and walked down cobble-stoned streets to the neighborhood near it, which is filled with restaurants and inns. Small tributaries also crossed by Turkish bridges lead to the river, provided postcard-perfect views. As we neared the Stari Most we found ourselves in the midst of a large band of French tourists, who had just arrived on two buses. That tainted the experience a bit, since French tourists are even less considerate of locals overall than Americans, but we persevered.
Nothing could take away from how incredible that bridge is. Pointed in the middle, each side is steep to climb up or down; the views of the rushing river below and the town lining the sides are incredible. On the other side of the bridge we entered the old bazaar and perused the shops. We stopped by the courtyard of the Koski Mehmed-Pasha Mosque, which has a beautiful fountain for pre-prayer cleansing and a peaceful garden. The mosque and the minaret are theoretically free to visitors, but that day they had a temporary sign charging 10 Euro for entry, probably due to the infusion of French tourists who were fine with paying. We opted out and moved on, finding lunch at a nearby cafe. They had burek there, so we finally got to try the pie with meat, as well as a slice of the cheese variety, sirnica. Both were tasty, but I really dug the burek.
We did some shopping in the bazaar, sniffing out some great deals deeper in the market away from the French folks, then climbed the hill to the old clock tower, which is mostly in ruins but sufficiently intact to tell what it is, trees growing our various parts of it. We kept going all the way up the hill and out of town a bit to a completely ruined building that must have once been great; the ruins themselves were ginormous. We couldn't figure out what they were, but snapped a photo of the sign near them telling about the construction project happening there in 2005 (guess they ran out of funds, too), and kept climbing. Drew stopped me from wandering off the paved path and onto gravel, which might house land mines. Yikes, forgot about that for a second. Silly me. The view over the city below was lovely, although a bit sad with the destroyed buildings visible.
After hiking back down we returned to the bridge and stopped in a free photo exhibition that showed the bridge before its collapse, during the war, after its collapse, during its rebuilding, and during its grand reopening, which was attended by dignitaries from around the world. There was also a short video that showed footage of the bazaar and bridge during the war, places where we had just stepped, that were completely destroyed. It was absolutely shocking to see scenes of smoking ruins, entering from the street that had been rebuilt. It's wonderful how far the city has come.
That's about it for Mostar. I found an ice cream cone and we wandered a bit more, but took off shortly after that. Our return driving trip was incident-free, a few wrong turns in Michelle's neighborhood notwithstanding. We were relieved to pull back into her courtyard with our persons and the car intact.
We woke to more rain on Wednesday morning. Michelle optimistically suggested that once we drove out of the Bosnian hills into Herzegovina, we'd have lovely weather. With her instructions to make two rights and then just keep going, you can't miss it, we headed out alone in one of their cars to Mostar, which is over 100 kilometers away from Sarajevo.
The road to Mostar took us through beautiful green hills and eventually along the gorgeous Neretva River in a gorge to rival any in Tennessee (it actually reminded me quite a lot of home). We passed entire villages that had been torched during the war and were no longer inhabited. We resisted stopping at one of the many "Bosnian fast-food joints," as I termed them, which were basically little huts with a lamb-roasting spit. Marco swears by them but Michelle said they were a little too rustic; plus, we'd had the best lamb around the night before. All along the route were policemen at intervals, who would wave motorists to the side of the road with little stop signs on a stick that look like oversized lollipops. Our guidebook had informed us that they were usually just looking for coffee money and to play the dumb tourist if you get stopped, but fortunately our diplomatic plates kept us from ever getting pulled over.
It took us several hours to make the trip, despite the short distance, because the roads are narrow and not in the best shape. They're better than you might expect, since they started out pretty well thanks to Tito's infrastructure reinforcement agenda. We were pleased that the tunnels that we encountered had lighting, since we'd heard from our guidebook and Michelle that at one point none of them did. And these are long tunnels. Another fun thing is Bosnians' very confident but surprising driving style; they like doing things like passing on hairpin curves. I'm glad Drew was driving so that we didn't run off the road when I put my hands over my eyes.
Upon arrival in Mostar we crossed one of the several bridges, the original keepers of which (mostari) likely provided the town with its name. Like Sarajevo, Mostar was part of the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, and the architecture of the bridges and older buildings reflect that. Also like Sarajevo, Mostar was severely damaged by bombs during the war, although the brunt of the damage was on buildings, not civilians. The front line of the war became the river, which divided the Croatians from the Muslims (originally the conflict here was between the Serbs and the Bosnians/Croats, but then the Croats attacked the Bosnian Muslims). During the course of the war all of the bridges across the river were destroyed, including the Stari Most (Old Bridge), which is the bridge for which the city is famous. It was a great tragedy that it collapse, leading to a great triumph when it was reopened after being rebuilt in 2004.
After looping the town we parked just above the Stari Most and walked down cobble-stoned streets to the neighborhood near it, which is filled with restaurants and inns. Small tributaries also crossed by Turkish bridges lead to the river, provided postcard-perfect views. As we neared the Stari Most we found ourselves in the midst of a large band of French tourists, who had just arrived on two buses. That tainted the experience a bit, since French tourists are even less considerate of locals overall than Americans, but we persevered.
Nothing could take away from how incredible that bridge is. Pointed in the middle, each side is steep to climb up or down; the views of the rushing river below and the town lining the sides are incredible. On the other side of the bridge we entered the old bazaar and perused the shops. We stopped by the courtyard of the Koski Mehmed-Pasha Mosque, which has a beautiful fountain for pre-prayer cleansing and a peaceful garden. The mosque and the minaret are theoretically free to visitors, but that day they had a temporary sign charging 10 Euro for entry, probably due to the infusion of French tourists who were fine with paying. We opted out and moved on, finding lunch at a nearby cafe. They had burek there, so we finally got to try the pie with meat, as well as a slice of the cheese variety, sirnica. Both were tasty, but I really dug the burek.
We did some shopping in the bazaar, sniffing out some great deals deeper in the market away from the French folks, then climbed the hill to the old clock tower, which is mostly in ruins but sufficiently intact to tell what it is, trees growing our various parts of it. We kept going all the way up the hill and out of town a bit to a completely ruined building that must have once been great; the ruins themselves were ginormous. We couldn't figure out what they were, but snapped a photo of the sign near them telling about the construction project happening there in 2005 (guess they ran out of funds, too), and kept climbing. Drew stopped me from wandering off the paved path and onto gravel, which might house land mines. Yikes, forgot about that for a second. Silly me. The view over the city below was lovely, although a bit sad with the destroyed buildings visible.
After hiking back down we returned to the bridge and stopped in a free photo exhibition that showed the bridge before its collapse, during the war, after its collapse, during its rebuilding, and during its grand reopening, which was attended by dignitaries from around the world. There was also a short video that showed footage of the bazaar and bridge during the war, places where we had just stepped, that were completely destroyed. It was absolutely shocking to see scenes of smoking ruins, entering from the street that had been rebuilt. It's wonderful how far the city has come.
That's about it for Mostar. I found an ice cream cone and we wandered a bit more, but took off shortly after that. Our return driving trip was incident-free, a few wrong turns in Michelle's neighborhood notwithstanding. We were relieved to pull back into her courtyard with our persons and the car intact.
Traditional Bosnian Dinner Last Tuesday Night
Sarajevo PhotosBacking up to last Tuesday for a moment: I got my days confused and forgot to describe our dinner on Tuesday night, which was an event. High up in the hills above the old town, but really just up the street from Michelle and Marco's house, is Kod Kibeta. It's a traditional Bosnian restaurant complete with lamb-roasting spit on the terrace and amazing views of the city. Since it was again pouring down rain when we got there, we couldn't see much of the view aside from city lights, but we got the idea.
Michelle ordered a slew of Bosnian dishes for the table along with a bottle of Slovenian red wine. We had walnut bread, a variety of salads, a big platter of the roasted lamb (fresh off the spit), meatballs, and three different kinds of dessert (one was basically baklava, one was a kind of apple tart, and the other I can't really describe except it had a fine-grained, mealy crust and was good). There may have been other food, but that's all I can remember right now, and that was plenty; there are photos of the dishes themselves and of the menu, which will help fill in the gaps later. Our meal concluded with serenading by two elderly but quick-fingered musicians, who sang and played guitars. They were like a roving juke box, taking requests from the Sarajevans at other tables who actually knew songs to ask for; we listened to whatever they chose.
Capping off our visit was a trip to the ladies' restroom, which was amusingly filled with everything you could possibly need (and more, really), including an array of hygiene sprays and spare stockings, just in case you got a run in yours, I suppose.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Saturday in Frankfurt and Cochem
Frankfurt Photos | Cochem Photos
Yeah, I know; woefully out of order at this point...
We left Rothenburg about mid-morning and headed to Frankfurt. I whipped out the binder to find the day's driving directions only to realize that I'd neglected to include the necessary second page, which would show us exactly how to get to the Frankfurt city center and to our ultimate destination, Cochem on the Mosel River. That left me in the uncomfortable position of flying by the seat of my pants, which is not my strength or preference. The result was that we did a full driving tour of the outer perimeter of Frankfurt before I found signs to the mittestadt.
We parked near the Romerburg, the market square of the old town, and accidentally emerged from the parkhaus (love that one) smack-dab in the middle of it. It's a nice square, fairly typical of German squares as we're now learning, with post-war rebuilt half-timbered houses. On one side is the town hall, which was once used by Holy Roman Emperors to party post-coronation. Since it was Saturday the square was extra-full of tourists, who although mostly German, still stifled us a bit so we slipped away toward the Main River. When I've seen Frankfurt's name, it's usually been associated with its airport, and I assumed that the "Main" part of the name meant that it was the main airport. Silly me. The Main is a river, pronounced "mine," which divides the city in half and provides a lovely promenade on either side.
We crossed the Main on a pedestrian bridge and paused to look back at where we'd come from as well as the rest of the city beyond it. After the war Frankfurters voted to go modern rather than rebuild their city in the old style, as Muncheners had opted to do, so there's an interesting juxtaposition of the medieval church spires near Romerburg and the sleek silver towers of modern office buildings beyond. We were happy to see a slice of modern, affluent Germany, one of the top five economies, which is pretty impressive considering they were bombed to hell and bankrupt fifty years ago.
On the other side of the river we found what we assume was a regular Saturday flea market, which was like a bunch of yard sales lumped together. Not exactly fodder for my purchases, but excellent people-watching material. We heard what had to be dozens of different languages and observed a noticeable diversity in appearance that had been absent elsewhere in Germany; a good portion of Frankfurt's population is comprised of non-Germans.
Since we were now in the Sachsenhausen District, home of many apfelwein pubs, we decided it was time for lunch and apfelwein, popularized in the era of Charlemagne and reinvigorated after a few failed grape crops. We found a pub with a weingarten and settled in to sample the local treats. It was a bonus that they had a non-alcoholic apfelwein for Drew to try, so we both had glasses full. It seemed like the only option to have frankfurters and sauerkraut in Frankfurt, so we did, along with a delicious brokkolisuppe. Neither of us are big fans of kraut as a condiment, but we were unprepared for it to be the main part of the entree. The frankfurters were pretty much like hot dogs (looks like we'd had mostly authentic German food since childhood after all) and the kraut was the best I've had, but definitely too much of a good thing. Between that and the mustard, my eyes were pretty watery. The apfelwein is sort of a cross between hard cider and regular wine; I actually preferred Drew's non-alcoholic variety because it was a tad sweeter, but that might be because I needed the contrast with the sour food.
We were running short on time after that, since we'd told our new landlords in Cochem that we'd be there by around 5:00 p.m., so we skipped our planned trip to the top of the Main Tower and instead rounded out our tour of Romerburg after we crossed back over the river. We strolled down Saalgasse, which is lined with rebuilt houses designed by modern architects. They're a breath of fresh air following the medieval to the point of cuteness houses in Rothenburg, which were lovely but almost overwhelming if you lean toward a modern design sensibility. After that we nearly tripped over the ruins of a Roman bath near St. Bartholomew's cathedral, which had just hosted a wedding; the bride, groom, and party were greeting guests outsides its doors. We slipped by them inside the church, uniquely constructed out of red sandstone. It was bombed like so much during WW2 and rebuilt, the stained glass and altar having been spared from the blasts by the canny use of sandbags and the paintings having been spirited out to safety beforehand. It was on this site that the Holy Roman Emperors got their titles. Pretty crazy.
After a final spin through Romerburg we headed out, back onto the construction sites that are the autobahns right now. I think we're caught in the post-winter, pre-masses of tourists construction season. We enjoyed what high-speed areas we could get and eventually ended up on a tiny winding road to Cochem, through fields of yellow flowers we have yet to identify and the tiny, adorable villages. Oh, one thing I haven't mentioned is the crazy number of windmills and solar fields here. Drew said that Germany has the largest number of solar panels per capital ("or something like that"), which is totally believable. Pretty cool.
Another thing I need to discuss before I forget about it is how enamored we are of German drivers and their well-made cars. I wish the whole world would take a lesson from them. They drive fast but with great courtesy and safety, only using the left lane for passing and immediately whipping back into the right lane to cruise along in their BMW at 180 or so km/h. It's a thing of beauty.
The winding road spat us out onto the main road that lines the Mosel River, which meets up with the Rhine to the east and is similar, but smaller and more intimate. It winds through a beautiful green valley, lined with a bike path full of folks pedaling away and roller-bladers. We enjoyed barge-watching as we cruised to Cochem, mentally planning on taking a short cruise on one of our days here.
When we arrived in Cochem it took us about 15 minutes to locate our digs, which is pretty good because we had two sides of the river to cover and nothing but an address. I hopped out at the TI building, which was closed but had a beautifully hand-painted map on the side, showing us the street we needed. Knowing that our place overlooked the river hadn't helped much, since nearly everything here does.
Now I'm sitting by the window in our flat for the next four days. Out the window to my right I can see the castle on the hill, hauntingly lighted at night. Through the window across from me we overlook the river. We reserved a studio apartment, but they upgraded us for free to the one bedroom, which is much larger. The flat is in the old Cochem wine school and is beautifully renovated and tastefully decorated. Our hostess, Blanka, welcomed us and showed us the space, as well as the inexpensive wine options they provide for purchase. I plan to try several.
After she got us situated, we headed out on foot to cross the river to the main part of town, checking to see if the grocery store was in fact closed until Monday. It is, which is a bummer since we have a small kitchen at our disposal but only half a loaf of bread and a jar of Nutella as our provisions. Nutella on toast will be an awesome breakfast tomorrow, but I hope to find an open store somewhere else during our day trips. Anyway, we wandered along the river and through Cochem's narrow, cobble-stoned streets, eventually ending up in the market square, where we sat by the fountain near the town hall and enjoyed the fading daylight while writing postcards.
Yeah, I know; woefully out of order at this point...
We left Rothenburg about mid-morning and headed to Frankfurt. I whipped out the binder to find the day's driving directions only to realize that I'd neglected to include the necessary second page, which would show us exactly how to get to the Frankfurt city center and to our ultimate destination, Cochem on the Mosel River. That left me in the uncomfortable position of flying by the seat of my pants, which is not my strength or preference. The result was that we did a full driving tour of the outer perimeter of Frankfurt before I found signs to the mittestadt.
We parked near the Romerburg, the market square of the old town, and accidentally emerged from the parkhaus (love that one) smack-dab in the middle of it. It's a nice square, fairly typical of German squares as we're now learning, with post-war rebuilt half-timbered houses. On one side is the town hall, which was once used by Holy Roman Emperors to party post-coronation. Since it was Saturday the square was extra-full of tourists, who although mostly German, still stifled us a bit so we slipped away toward the Main River. When I've seen Frankfurt's name, it's usually been associated with its airport, and I assumed that the "Main" part of the name meant that it was the main airport. Silly me. The Main is a river, pronounced "mine," which divides the city in half and provides a lovely promenade on either side.
We crossed the Main on a pedestrian bridge and paused to look back at where we'd come from as well as the rest of the city beyond it. After the war Frankfurters voted to go modern rather than rebuild their city in the old style, as Muncheners had opted to do, so there's an interesting juxtaposition of the medieval church spires near Romerburg and the sleek silver towers of modern office buildings beyond. We were happy to see a slice of modern, affluent Germany, one of the top five economies, which is pretty impressive considering they were bombed to hell and bankrupt fifty years ago.
On the other side of the river we found what we assume was a regular Saturday flea market, which was like a bunch of yard sales lumped together. Not exactly fodder for my purchases, but excellent people-watching material. We heard what had to be dozens of different languages and observed a noticeable diversity in appearance that had been absent elsewhere in Germany; a good portion of Frankfurt's population is comprised of non-Germans.
Since we were now in the Sachsenhausen District, home of many apfelwein pubs, we decided it was time for lunch and apfelwein, popularized in the era of Charlemagne and reinvigorated after a few failed grape crops. We found a pub with a weingarten and settled in to sample the local treats. It was a bonus that they had a non-alcoholic apfelwein for Drew to try, so we both had glasses full. It seemed like the only option to have frankfurters and sauerkraut in Frankfurt, so we did, along with a delicious brokkolisuppe. Neither of us are big fans of kraut as a condiment, but we were unprepared for it to be the main part of the entree. The frankfurters were pretty much like hot dogs (looks like we'd had mostly authentic German food since childhood after all) and the kraut was the best I've had, but definitely too much of a good thing. Between that and the mustard, my eyes were pretty watery. The apfelwein is sort of a cross between hard cider and regular wine; I actually preferred Drew's non-alcoholic variety because it was a tad sweeter, but that might be because I needed the contrast with the sour food.
We were running short on time after that, since we'd told our new landlords in Cochem that we'd be there by around 5:00 p.m., so we skipped our planned trip to the top of the Main Tower and instead rounded out our tour of Romerburg after we crossed back over the river. We strolled down Saalgasse, which is lined with rebuilt houses designed by modern architects. They're a breath of fresh air following the medieval to the point of cuteness houses in Rothenburg, which were lovely but almost overwhelming if you lean toward a modern design sensibility. After that we nearly tripped over the ruins of a Roman bath near St. Bartholomew's cathedral, which had just hosted a wedding; the bride, groom, and party were greeting guests outsides its doors. We slipped by them inside the church, uniquely constructed out of red sandstone. It was bombed like so much during WW2 and rebuilt, the stained glass and altar having been spared from the blasts by the canny use of sandbags and the paintings having been spirited out to safety beforehand. It was on this site that the Holy Roman Emperors got their titles. Pretty crazy.
After a final spin through Romerburg we headed out, back onto the construction sites that are the autobahns right now. I think we're caught in the post-winter, pre-masses of tourists construction season. We enjoyed what high-speed areas we could get and eventually ended up on a tiny winding road to Cochem, through fields of yellow flowers we have yet to identify and the tiny, adorable villages. Oh, one thing I haven't mentioned is the crazy number of windmills and solar fields here. Drew said that Germany has the largest number of solar panels per capital ("or something like that"), which is totally believable. Pretty cool.
Another thing I need to discuss before I forget about it is how enamored we are of German drivers and their well-made cars. I wish the whole world would take a lesson from them. They drive fast but with great courtesy and safety, only using the left lane for passing and immediately whipping back into the right lane to cruise along in their BMW at 180 or so km/h. It's a thing of beauty.
The winding road spat us out onto the main road that lines the Mosel River, which meets up with the Rhine to the east and is similar, but smaller and more intimate. It winds through a beautiful green valley, lined with a bike path full of folks pedaling away and roller-bladers. We enjoyed barge-watching as we cruised to Cochem, mentally planning on taking a short cruise on one of our days here.
When we arrived in Cochem it took us about 15 minutes to locate our digs, which is pretty good because we had two sides of the river to cover and nothing but an address. I hopped out at the TI building, which was closed but had a beautifully hand-painted map on the side, showing us the street we needed. Knowing that our place overlooked the river hadn't helped much, since nearly everything here does.
Now I'm sitting by the window in our flat for the next four days. Out the window to my right I can see the castle on the hill, hauntingly lighted at night. Through the window across from me we overlook the river. We reserved a studio apartment, but they upgraded us for free to the one bedroom, which is much larger. The flat is in the old Cochem wine school and is beautifully renovated and tastefully decorated. Our hostess, Blanka, welcomed us and showed us the space, as well as the inexpensive wine options they provide for purchase. I plan to try several.
After she got us situated, we headed out on foot to cross the river to the main part of town, checking to see if the grocery store was in fact closed until Monday. It is, which is a bummer since we have a small kitchen at our disposal but only half a loaf of bread and a jar of Nutella as our provisions. Nutella on toast will be an awesome breakfast tomorrow, but I hope to find an open store somewhere else during our day trips. Anyway, we wandered along the river and through Cochem's narrow, cobble-stoned streets, eventually ending up in the market square, where we sat by the fountain near the town hall and enjoyed the fading daylight while writing postcards.
Dogs in Germany
I need to take a moment to talk about Germans and their dogs. We'd known since the beginning of our trip that dogs are highly regarded family members here, taking the partner pass for public transportation in Munich that includes one dog as a tip. We'd seen plenty of folks walking their happy and well-mannered dogs all over the place and conscientiously picking up after them. But two things we hadn't seen until Rothenburg were dogs accompanying their parents into musems and into restaurants—not onto a cafe patio, but into a 600-year-old inn restaurant to slump down happily under the table and await their rightful bowl of water, which was quickly provided. It's just plain awesome. If you dislike dogs, you might not enjoy Germany so much. All of this has made us miss Monty, except for the part where he would eat all the wurst he could get and knock over all the museum exhibits.
Sarajevo (Last Tuesday)
Sarajevo Photos
Michelle arranged for us to have a two-hour tour of Sarajevo on Tuesday morning. We were five minutes late meeting our guide in Sebilj Square (a.k.a. pigeon square), which turned out to be fine because our guide was stuck in traffic himself. Instead we met his boss, who was there to pass along the message, and get us started on a historical overview of Sarajevo.
I've been postponing writing about this because there's so much to try to keep straight. As a disclaimer, it's very possible that my facts aren't correct or off by a bit, since we've packed in quite a bit since then and I currently don't have Internet access so I can't fact-check very thoroughly. Please forgive any mistakes. This is also probably way more detail than you want, but keep in mind that this is as much for myself as it is for you.
Sarajevo has a long, complicated history, involving a variety of cultures and religions sharing the same space and being dominated by various groups. Located on what was a major trade route between western Europe and Asia, it's been the meeting place of all manner of people. It's official founding date is 1462, although the area had long been inhabited. The most prominent cultures that are visible today are from when was part of the Ottoman Empire (15th through 18th centuries) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (late 18th century). The market in which we stood is clearly a product of the former; alleys radiate from it, each with a commercial purpose dictated 500 years ago: iron workers, tin craftsmen, leather artisans, you name it, each have their own street with cramped shops.
It was at about this point in guide #1's spiel that guide #2 showed up and took over. We left pigeon square and wove our way through the market, stopping at first at a stop selling the traditional Bosnian (a.k.a. Turkish) coffee sets and the braziers that once heated the central part of houses as well as beverages. Tradition goes that if you're expecting guests you're interested in spending time with, you warm up their coffee and stoke the coals; if you'd rather your guests take a hike, you remove the coals and let their coffee cool, still happily telling them to stay as long as they'd like.
We passed a faded, framed photograph portrait of Tito on one of the shop walls. You wouldn't believe how revered and mourned he is. Yugoslavia under his rule are the good old days, times when everyone had a job who wanted one, factories were built, the infrastructure was reinforced, etc. Now huge numbers of Bosnians are unemployed. Evidence of that is in how many people are out in the streets and in the cafes all the time.
From the market we walked to the National Library, which was originally the town hall, which is currently surrounded by scaffolding. It was intentionally bombed by the Serb army occupying the hills surrounding the city during the siege. Hundreds of thousands of books, many of which were priceless, burned. Now there aren't enough funds to rebuild it, so it's just sitting there waiting for an infusion of cash, which I doubt will be forthcoming anytime soon. All of the postcards we bought of Sarajevo are from the period before the war, when beautiful buildings like this were still intact.
We stood on one of the many bridges that cross the Miljacka River and our guide told us a fantastic story. The site were the library now stands was once the property of a private homeowner who refused to sell it to the Austrian government who wanted it for the new town hall. He figured that they'd eventually give up, but they didn't, so he said that he'd sell them the land but not the house; if they wanted the land so badly, they'd move his house to the other side of the river, thinking that would shut them up. Instead he found himself suddenly living across the river. His house's nickname is now loosely translate as the "house of spite" as is a lovely restaurant with a great view of the library.
We walked up the hill to the Sarajevska Pivara, a beautifully constructed building. It wasn't open at that hour, but our guide snuck us in for a peek at the coffered ceilings and dark-paneled woodwork. During the war the brewery was one of the few safe sources of drinking water, sitting as it does on a spring. The Serbs poisoned much of the water that they didn't just shut off. Down the street from the Pivara is the Franciscan monastery and church, which is constructed very similarly to the Pivara and is the same red color; our guide said that it wasn't uncommon for folks to head to church and end up in the brewery by accident.
After our guide discussed how the monastery had been bombed (I had asked if the Serbs spared the Catholics because at least they're Christian; the answer: nope), I asked him if he had been living in Sarajevo during the war. He nodded, so I asked if he would be willing to share his experience, but not to feel obliged to do so. He said that he was a child at the time, but that his family had been imprisoned by the Serb Army. Later he, his sister, and mother were released into the care of one of the aid organizations and relocated to Graz in Austria. His father somehow managed to survive. Our guide spent the rest of his youth in Graz before eventually returning to Sarajevo, hence his German accent; many Bosnian children grew up there but not all have returned. He kept apologizing for occasionally forgetting a word in his otherwise perfect English, having only given German tours for the past several months. When I explained how Americans generally speak one language well and barely learn another in high school and college, I don't think he could tell whether I was being serious or joking.
We passed the Careva Mosque, which I think is the oldest existing mosque in Sarajevo; even if it isn't, it's still one of them, having been founded in the mid-fifteenth century. The current building is a century younger, but still nothing to sneeze at. It was at this point that all my illusions were shattered and I learned that there's only one real, live muezzin out there calling folks to prayer, the rest of the calls being prerecorded and broadcasted on loudspeakers. Somewhere near here we also passed a brand-spanking-new mosque, which I correctly identified as the gift of the Saudis. They've been very generous with donating the construction of mosques to Sarajevo, always willing to provide places of worship. Folks here wish they would be equally generous with donating practical structures like factories.
After crossing back over the river we paused, astonished, as we spied a Mexican restaurant complete with giant sombrero on top. We opted out of testing its authenticity, but were impressed nonetheless. Back in the market, we stopped by the Morica Han, where we'd had our coffee the previous day, to learn about caravanserai. I was pleased to be able to say that we knew what they were, having visited one in Granada on our trip to Spain. Still, it was pretty neat to hear about this one, learning about the system through which travelers didn't have to pay for their stays, otherwise boosting the economy with their purchases.
We retraced yesterday's footsteps down the Ferhadija pedestrian avenue to the Gazi Husrev Begova Mosque. This time we entered the courtyard and watched a woman prayed on one of the rugs carpeting the porch (I hate to call it that, because it's so big and attractive, but veranda is the only other word I can think of at the moment, and that just seems to much of a cultural contrast). Outside the mosque is a gazebo-like structure (there, I did it anyway) with a fountain for cleansing before prayer. The mosque itself dates from earlier than the Careva Mosque, in 1530. It's been destroyed a rebuilt several times, though. It's the most centrally located and popular mosque and apparently packed during prayer time.
We walked around the side of the mosque to see the crypt, where an important guy I can't remember and can't look up without Internet access is interred. There's also a cemetery, which prompted me to ask my question about why Muslim headstones look the way they do; I'd seen my first yesterday in the park, which were worn down but still kind of like swirled spheres. Turns out that they're designed to look like turbans, indicating where the head of the body lies. The side door of the mosque, the side where the women usually enter and worship, was open, so after slapping his baseball cap down on my head our guide ducked inside with us to allow us to see the incredibly beautiful, airy interior, blanketed by Persian rugs and capped by intricately painted ceilings. We then took a look at the madrasa across the street, which was founded about the same time as the mosque, and is responsible for the large number of students we saw in the Morica Han during our coffee break yesterday.
Literally steps away from there was what was formerly the Jewish quarter. When the Jews were driven out of Spain during the Inquisition, many of them ended up in the Ottoman Empire. The sultan welcomed them in to Sarajevo, not out of the kindness of his heart, but rather for selfish motives: he knew that having Jews around was good for the economy. Originally the Jews were integrated in the community a bit more, but apparently they had a hard time adjusting to Bosnian winters and ended up accidentally causing fires. That resulted in their own Jewish quarter, which was never a ghetto (I asked). The original synagogue was constructed in the 16th century and has been rebuilt several times. Now it's the Jewish Museum, which we returned to visit later that day with Michelle.
A few more steps brought us to the Catholic cathedral, which is absolutely tiny by European cathedral standards. The reason, of course, is obvious: there just aren't that many Catholics in a Muslim-dominated town. On Christmas Eve the church is too small to hold all who come to worship, and the masses spill out into the square in front of the church. Apparently the crowd includes folks from many different religions, because Christmas has become a big thing here.
Just a block away is the Saborna Crkva, the Orthodox church. It's very dark inside and filled with icons, as you'd expect. Since Orthodox Easter had just taken place, the usually private rooms in the back that only the priest ever enters were open to view. In the back of the church was a ginormous scaffolding, not currently in use because they ran out of funds to restore the cathedral after they built the mechanism by which to do it.
Having seen just how close these four very different religious groups live together, it's amazing to think of how melded the cultures were for so long and all the more understandable about why a war might break out along religious lines since all of the cannon fodder is right there. It's all the more tragic, though, to think of people living harmoniously one day and then having things break down the next. Michelle said that Marco's driver lived side by side with Serbs for decades, friendly and peaceful. The day for the siege they up and moved away without a word, and the next day the bombing began.
From the church we walked past the newly renovated (post-bombing) and reopened Hotel Europa then turned the corner to the place where in the spring of 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Archduchess Sofia (who was pregnant; I hadn't known that before) were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, kicking off World War I. I very clearly remember these names from memorizing them during AP Euro and thinking about Sarajevo then as such a far-off place, low on the list of places I wanted to visit, especially since in the late nineties the name was freshly associated with the recent war. And here I was, on that very corner. I had never known much about the assassination, but that morning I learned that the Archduke had been on a city tour and there was an initial attempt at murdering him by bombing at the town hall. After that he was royally pissed and called off the city tour. Apparently his driver didn't get the message, though, and proceeded along. When the Archduke realized he was proceeding, he had him turn the corner and stop. Their car pulled up right next to a sidewalk cafe where Princip happened to have a table. He pulled out his gun and killed them both. Austria attacked Serbia and war broke out.
Our tour was officially at an end at that point, but our guide invited us to join him in one of the traditional Turkish bars for a shisha (hookah) smoke. We declined the offer of the smoke, but said we'd like to have a drink, so we retraced our steps through the market, wending our way through alleys to a tiny little patio bar tucked between larger buildings. We grabbed a low couch under some trees and asked our guide to order for us. We ended up with something our waiter called "juice," but was made from flowers rather than fruit. Initially it was almost too sweet to swallow, but after a bit we got used to it and liked it. Our guide blissed out with his shisha pipe and we exchanged stories more casually. When we told him we were from Oakland his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped, making us laugh that Oakland's rep extends so far and someone who had survived Sarajevo under siege and Serbian prison would feel threatened by our city. When we pointed that out to him, at how folks back home had raised their eyebrows at our planning a trip to Sarajevo, he cracked up.
We then headed back home, where Michelle awaited us with sandwich fixings. After lunch we walked just a few blocks from her house to the Svrzina Kuca, Svrzo's House, which is a good portion of the original estate of a wealthy Turkish family who lived there as it currently is until the mid-20th century. It's traditionally set up as Bosnian families lived for centuries, albeit how they lived when they had loads of money. The curator was busy with a bunch of school-kids, so Michelle began our tour, showing us the "horse garage" (stable), the lazy susan in a cabinet that allowed the women cloistered on one side of the house to serve the men food without being seen, the personal fountain that they paid the town to allow them to install, the ginormous kitchen with coal-burning oven, and one of the many multi-purpose rooms. Each room in the house could be used for any purpose at any time; each one had a bathroom with shower (pot hanging from a hook with a drain in the floor), fireplace/oven with round ceramic facings to distribute heat, a closet for bed linens, a bench with cushions around the perimeter, and a brazier like the ones we saw in the market (I think the Bosnian word is magala; it's one of the only words I learned and it's killing me I can't remember it). You could greet guests, have a meal, or sleep in any of the rooms with only changing a few things around. Very clever.
The curator showed up around then and took us upstairs, showing us a couple of more multi-purpose rooms arranged in ways of possible use, like for a meal and for women's work (sewing). The rooms on the women's side of the house had latticework over the windows to allow them to see out but so no one could see in to look at them. This makes me think of how Bosnian women are now, which is an interesting combination of miniskirts and stilettos and an occasional minimal black drape that still shows off prettily made-up faces.
From Svrzo's house we walked down the hill to the Jewish Museum, the courtyard of which we'd been in earlier. The curator greeted us there also and answered our questions throughout our tour. As I mentioned previously, it's set up in the original synagogue, and it's much bigger than I'd originally though, about 3 or 4 stories tall. The first floor included a headstone from a Jewish Bosnian grave, which is different than any headstone I've ever seen, which is because they're unique to the location; someday we'll have photos to go along with this narrative. The first couple of floors showed the Jewish history in Sarajevo for the past five hundred years. The top floor was dedicated to the Holocaust in Bosnia. The photos of women walking arm in arm through the streets to hide their armbands with the Star of David on them were heart-breaking, although not nearly as much as the oversized book suspended from the ceiling that includes the names of the victims. The museum does an excellent job of personalizing the experience. It was a bit hard to handle after being in Dachau just a couple of days before, but well worth it.
We returned to the Ferhadija again for a stroll, stopping by the eternal flame that honors the victims of all the wars that have torn Sarajevo apart over the years. Michelle commented that when the Russians cut off the gaslines in winter and the eternal flame proved not to be such, a political cartoon ran in the paper with a space heater sitting on top of the flame's usual spot.
Michelle stopped to buy a recharge card for their second cell phone, which we were borrowing, but the Bosnian instructions proved impossible, so we decided to walk to Marco's office to see it and to have his admin fix up the phone for us. As we walked it started pouring down rain, so we were a bit bedraggled when we entered Marco's office. He has a corner office high up in one of the towers, so we got an excellent view of the city from this side, much further west than their home. From there we stopped by a cafe for what Marco's employees refer to as the best burek to be had anywhere. Burek and its sister dishes are basically rolls of phyllo dough lined with filling circling a pizza pan-sized dish, baked to a golden brown. They're cut like pizza also, in giant wedges. They were sadly out of burek itself, which is the meat-filled one, so we had zeljanica, which is filled with spinach, and krompirusa, which has potatoes and onions. Both were delicious but I preferred the latter.
Michelle had to head home to meet the kids at that point, so Drew and I set off further west on foot to see more of bombed-to-hell Sarajevo. We walked only a few miles but saw so much damage, so many buildings that have yet to be demolished and/or rebuilt. Some of them have trees growing out of them at this point; others are basically small garbage dumps. We crossed many "Sarajevo roses" on our route, the marks on the pavement caused by mortar fire filled in with red resin to mark when one or more civilians were struck down during the siege. We stopped inside the Holiday Inn, which has been rebuilt to its previously ugly early eighties architectural standards. Once we were thoroughly depressed and further away than we realized, we made the long walk home. Dinner with the family was very welcome.
Michelle arranged for us to have a two-hour tour of Sarajevo on Tuesday morning. We were five minutes late meeting our guide in Sebilj Square (a.k.a. pigeon square), which turned out to be fine because our guide was stuck in traffic himself. Instead we met his boss, who was there to pass along the message, and get us started on a historical overview of Sarajevo.
I've been postponing writing about this because there's so much to try to keep straight. As a disclaimer, it's very possible that my facts aren't correct or off by a bit, since we've packed in quite a bit since then and I currently don't have Internet access so I can't fact-check very thoroughly. Please forgive any mistakes. This is also probably way more detail than you want, but keep in mind that this is as much for myself as it is for you.
Sarajevo has a long, complicated history, involving a variety of cultures and religions sharing the same space and being dominated by various groups. Located on what was a major trade route between western Europe and Asia, it's been the meeting place of all manner of people. It's official founding date is 1462, although the area had long been inhabited. The most prominent cultures that are visible today are from when was part of the Ottoman Empire (15th through 18th centuries) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (late 18th century). The market in which we stood is clearly a product of the former; alleys radiate from it, each with a commercial purpose dictated 500 years ago: iron workers, tin craftsmen, leather artisans, you name it, each have their own street with cramped shops.
It was at about this point in guide #1's spiel that guide #2 showed up and took over. We left pigeon square and wove our way through the market, stopping at first at a stop selling the traditional Bosnian (a.k.a. Turkish) coffee sets and the braziers that once heated the central part of houses as well as beverages. Tradition goes that if you're expecting guests you're interested in spending time with, you warm up their coffee and stoke the coals; if you'd rather your guests take a hike, you remove the coals and let their coffee cool, still happily telling them to stay as long as they'd like.
We passed a faded, framed photograph portrait of Tito on one of the shop walls. You wouldn't believe how revered and mourned he is. Yugoslavia under his rule are the good old days, times when everyone had a job who wanted one, factories were built, the infrastructure was reinforced, etc. Now huge numbers of Bosnians are unemployed. Evidence of that is in how many people are out in the streets and in the cafes all the time.
From the market we walked to the National Library, which was originally the town hall, which is currently surrounded by scaffolding. It was intentionally bombed by the Serb army occupying the hills surrounding the city during the siege. Hundreds of thousands of books, many of which were priceless, burned. Now there aren't enough funds to rebuild it, so it's just sitting there waiting for an infusion of cash, which I doubt will be forthcoming anytime soon. All of the postcards we bought of Sarajevo are from the period before the war, when beautiful buildings like this were still intact.
We stood on one of the many bridges that cross the Miljacka River and our guide told us a fantastic story. The site were the library now stands was once the property of a private homeowner who refused to sell it to the Austrian government who wanted it for the new town hall. He figured that they'd eventually give up, but they didn't, so he said that he'd sell them the land but not the house; if they wanted the land so badly, they'd move his house to the other side of the river, thinking that would shut them up. Instead he found himself suddenly living across the river. His house's nickname is now loosely translate as the "house of spite" as is a lovely restaurant with a great view of the library.
We walked up the hill to the Sarajevska Pivara, a beautifully constructed building. It wasn't open at that hour, but our guide snuck us in for a peek at the coffered ceilings and dark-paneled woodwork. During the war the brewery was one of the few safe sources of drinking water, sitting as it does on a spring. The Serbs poisoned much of the water that they didn't just shut off. Down the street from the Pivara is the Franciscan monastery and church, which is constructed very similarly to the Pivara and is the same red color; our guide said that it wasn't uncommon for folks to head to church and end up in the brewery by accident.
After our guide discussed how the monastery had been bombed (I had asked if the Serbs spared the Catholics because at least they're Christian; the answer: nope), I asked him if he had been living in Sarajevo during the war. He nodded, so I asked if he would be willing to share his experience, but not to feel obliged to do so. He said that he was a child at the time, but that his family had been imprisoned by the Serb Army. Later he, his sister, and mother were released into the care of one of the aid organizations and relocated to Graz in Austria. His father somehow managed to survive. Our guide spent the rest of his youth in Graz before eventually returning to Sarajevo, hence his German accent; many Bosnian children grew up there but not all have returned. He kept apologizing for occasionally forgetting a word in his otherwise perfect English, having only given German tours for the past several months. When I explained how Americans generally speak one language well and barely learn another in high school and college, I don't think he could tell whether I was being serious or joking.
We passed the Careva Mosque, which I think is the oldest existing mosque in Sarajevo; even if it isn't, it's still one of them, having been founded in the mid-fifteenth century. The current building is a century younger, but still nothing to sneeze at. It was at this point that all my illusions were shattered and I learned that there's only one real, live muezzin out there calling folks to prayer, the rest of the calls being prerecorded and broadcasted on loudspeakers. Somewhere near here we also passed a brand-spanking-new mosque, which I correctly identified as the gift of the Saudis. They've been very generous with donating the construction of mosques to Sarajevo, always willing to provide places of worship. Folks here wish they would be equally generous with donating practical structures like factories.
After crossing back over the river we paused, astonished, as we spied a Mexican restaurant complete with giant sombrero on top. We opted out of testing its authenticity, but were impressed nonetheless. Back in the market, we stopped by the Morica Han, where we'd had our coffee the previous day, to learn about caravanserai. I was pleased to be able to say that we knew what they were, having visited one in Granada on our trip to Spain. Still, it was pretty neat to hear about this one, learning about the system through which travelers didn't have to pay for their stays, otherwise boosting the economy with their purchases.
We retraced yesterday's footsteps down the Ferhadija pedestrian avenue to the Gazi Husrev Begova Mosque. This time we entered the courtyard and watched a woman prayed on one of the rugs carpeting the porch (I hate to call it that, because it's so big and attractive, but veranda is the only other word I can think of at the moment, and that just seems to much of a cultural contrast). Outside the mosque is a gazebo-like structure (there, I did it anyway) with a fountain for cleansing before prayer. The mosque itself dates from earlier than the Careva Mosque, in 1530. It's been destroyed a rebuilt several times, though. It's the most centrally located and popular mosque and apparently packed during prayer time.
We walked around the side of the mosque to see the crypt, where an important guy I can't remember and can't look up without Internet access is interred. There's also a cemetery, which prompted me to ask my question about why Muslim headstones look the way they do; I'd seen my first yesterday in the park, which were worn down but still kind of like swirled spheres. Turns out that they're designed to look like turbans, indicating where the head of the body lies. The side door of the mosque, the side where the women usually enter and worship, was open, so after slapping his baseball cap down on my head our guide ducked inside with us to allow us to see the incredibly beautiful, airy interior, blanketed by Persian rugs and capped by intricately painted ceilings. We then took a look at the madrasa across the street, which was founded about the same time as the mosque, and is responsible for the large number of students we saw in the Morica Han during our coffee break yesterday.
Literally steps away from there was what was formerly the Jewish quarter. When the Jews were driven out of Spain during the Inquisition, many of them ended up in the Ottoman Empire. The sultan welcomed them in to Sarajevo, not out of the kindness of his heart, but rather for selfish motives: he knew that having Jews around was good for the economy. Originally the Jews were integrated in the community a bit more, but apparently they had a hard time adjusting to Bosnian winters and ended up accidentally causing fires. That resulted in their own Jewish quarter, which was never a ghetto (I asked). The original synagogue was constructed in the 16th century and has been rebuilt several times. Now it's the Jewish Museum, which we returned to visit later that day with Michelle.
A few more steps brought us to the Catholic cathedral, which is absolutely tiny by European cathedral standards. The reason, of course, is obvious: there just aren't that many Catholics in a Muslim-dominated town. On Christmas Eve the church is too small to hold all who come to worship, and the masses spill out into the square in front of the church. Apparently the crowd includes folks from many different religions, because Christmas has become a big thing here.
Just a block away is the Saborna Crkva, the Orthodox church. It's very dark inside and filled with icons, as you'd expect. Since Orthodox Easter had just taken place, the usually private rooms in the back that only the priest ever enters were open to view. In the back of the church was a ginormous scaffolding, not currently in use because they ran out of funds to restore the cathedral after they built the mechanism by which to do it.
Having seen just how close these four very different religious groups live together, it's amazing to think of how melded the cultures were for so long and all the more understandable about why a war might break out along religious lines since all of the cannon fodder is right there. It's all the more tragic, though, to think of people living harmoniously one day and then having things break down the next. Michelle said that Marco's driver lived side by side with Serbs for decades, friendly and peaceful. The day for the siege they up and moved away without a word, and the next day the bombing began.
From the church we walked past the newly renovated (post-bombing) and reopened Hotel Europa then turned the corner to the place where in the spring of 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Archduchess Sofia (who was pregnant; I hadn't known that before) were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, kicking off World War I. I very clearly remember these names from memorizing them during AP Euro and thinking about Sarajevo then as such a far-off place, low on the list of places I wanted to visit, especially since in the late nineties the name was freshly associated with the recent war. And here I was, on that very corner. I had never known much about the assassination, but that morning I learned that the Archduke had been on a city tour and there was an initial attempt at murdering him by bombing at the town hall. After that he was royally pissed and called off the city tour. Apparently his driver didn't get the message, though, and proceeded along. When the Archduke realized he was proceeding, he had him turn the corner and stop. Their car pulled up right next to a sidewalk cafe where Princip happened to have a table. He pulled out his gun and killed them both. Austria attacked Serbia and war broke out.
Our tour was officially at an end at that point, but our guide invited us to join him in one of the traditional Turkish bars for a shisha (hookah) smoke. We declined the offer of the smoke, but said we'd like to have a drink, so we retraced our steps through the market, wending our way through alleys to a tiny little patio bar tucked between larger buildings. We grabbed a low couch under some trees and asked our guide to order for us. We ended up with something our waiter called "juice," but was made from flowers rather than fruit. Initially it was almost too sweet to swallow, but after a bit we got used to it and liked it. Our guide blissed out with his shisha pipe and we exchanged stories more casually. When we told him we were from Oakland his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped, making us laugh that Oakland's rep extends so far and someone who had survived Sarajevo under siege and Serbian prison would feel threatened by our city. When we pointed that out to him, at how folks back home had raised their eyebrows at our planning a trip to Sarajevo, he cracked up.
We then headed back home, where Michelle awaited us with sandwich fixings. After lunch we walked just a few blocks from her house to the Svrzina Kuca, Svrzo's House, which is a good portion of the original estate of a wealthy Turkish family who lived there as it currently is until the mid-20th century. It's traditionally set up as Bosnian families lived for centuries, albeit how they lived when they had loads of money. The curator was busy with a bunch of school-kids, so Michelle began our tour, showing us the "horse garage" (stable), the lazy susan in a cabinet that allowed the women cloistered on one side of the house to serve the men food without being seen, the personal fountain that they paid the town to allow them to install, the ginormous kitchen with coal-burning oven, and one of the many multi-purpose rooms. Each room in the house could be used for any purpose at any time; each one had a bathroom with shower (pot hanging from a hook with a drain in the floor), fireplace/oven with round ceramic facings to distribute heat, a closet for bed linens, a bench with cushions around the perimeter, and a brazier like the ones we saw in the market (I think the Bosnian word is magala; it's one of the only words I learned and it's killing me I can't remember it). You could greet guests, have a meal, or sleep in any of the rooms with only changing a few things around. Very clever.
The curator showed up around then and took us upstairs, showing us a couple of more multi-purpose rooms arranged in ways of possible use, like for a meal and for women's work (sewing). The rooms on the women's side of the house had latticework over the windows to allow them to see out but so no one could see in to look at them. This makes me think of how Bosnian women are now, which is an interesting combination of miniskirts and stilettos and an occasional minimal black drape that still shows off prettily made-up faces.
From Svrzo's house we walked down the hill to the Jewish Museum, the courtyard of which we'd been in earlier. The curator greeted us there also and answered our questions throughout our tour. As I mentioned previously, it's set up in the original synagogue, and it's much bigger than I'd originally though, about 3 or 4 stories tall. The first floor included a headstone from a Jewish Bosnian grave, which is different than any headstone I've ever seen, which is because they're unique to the location; someday we'll have photos to go along with this narrative. The first couple of floors showed the Jewish history in Sarajevo for the past five hundred years. The top floor was dedicated to the Holocaust in Bosnia. The photos of women walking arm in arm through the streets to hide their armbands with the Star of David on them were heart-breaking, although not nearly as much as the oversized book suspended from the ceiling that includes the names of the victims. The museum does an excellent job of personalizing the experience. It was a bit hard to handle after being in Dachau just a couple of days before, but well worth it.
We returned to the Ferhadija again for a stroll, stopping by the eternal flame that honors the victims of all the wars that have torn Sarajevo apart over the years. Michelle commented that when the Russians cut off the gaslines in winter and the eternal flame proved not to be such, a political cartoon ran in the paper with a space heater sitting on top of the flame's usual spot.
Michelle stopped to buy a recharge card for their second cell phone, which we were borrowing, but the Bosnian instructions proved impossible, so we decided to walk to Marco's office to see it and to have his admin fix up the phone for us. As we walked it started pouring down rain, so we were a bit bedraggled when we entered Marco's office. He has a corner office high up in one of the towers, so we got an excellent view of the city from this side, much further west than their home. From there we stopped by a cafe for what Marco's employees refer to as the best burek to be had anywhere. Burek and its sister dishes are basically rolls of phyllo dough lined with filling circling a pizza pan-sized dish, baked to a golden brown. They're cut like pizza also, in giant wedges. They were sadly out of burek itself, which is the meat-filled one, so we had zeljanica, which is filled with spinach, and krompirusa, which has potatoes and onions. Both were delicious but I preferred the latter.
Michelle had to head home to meet the kids at that point, so Drew and I set off further west on foot to see more of bombed-to-hell Sarajevo. We walked only a few miles but saw so much damage, so many buildings that have yet to be demolished and/or rebuilt. Some of them have trees growing out of them at this point; others are basically small garbage dumps. We crossed many "Sarajevo roses" on our route, the marks on the pavement caused by mortar fire filled in with red resin to mark when one or more civilians were struck down during the siege. We stopped inside the Holiday Inn, which has been rebuilt to its previously ugly early eighties architectural standards. Once we were thoroughly depressed and further away than we realized, we made the long walk home. Dinner with the family was very welcome.
Back Online!
We've spent the past four nights in Cochem on the Mosel River in a lovely flat with beautiful views of a castle and the river, but, alas, no Internet. Drew took what I'm sure will turn out to be amusing photos of me wandering around Cochem with the laptop, trying fruitlessly to jump onto someone's network. Now we're in Reutte, Austria, looking out our hotel window at the alps and a herd of goats. I kept up the blogging during the drought, so here comes the flood; as you'll see, there's a lot of stuff, but still a bunch of gaps since I can't help but go into great detail; plus, I'm trying to do the "vacationy bit," as Drew calls it.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Return to Bavaria (Thursday)
Dinkelsbuhl Photos
Yes, I know, getting out of order again; bear with me. It's going to take more time and energy than I have at the moment to describe the rest of our Bosnian adventure, so I'm going to skip to our flight back to Munich yesterday afternoon. I'll sum up Bosnia by saying it was fantastic and everyone should visit. More on that later.
After arriving in Munich (again) we picked up our rental car. When we began to discuss this trip one of our first mutual thoughts was ensuring somehow that we got a German car to drive on the autobahns. As you probably know, there's no way to reserve a particular car with any rental company (although I did hours of research trying to circumvent the system). In the end we got a good deal with Hertz for a car with navigation, which had VW Golf built into the group name (no "or similar" in sight). My theory was that with Hertz they generally try to make you happy and if we paid for a car with bells and whistles like navigation we'd have room to negotiate. My theory proved correct. They tried to give us a Kia, which made me frown less than a Ford would have, but still; I drive a Hyundai, so Kia isn't exactly exciting. I made my pitch for doing without navigation in order to please, please, please have a German car. They took pity on us and shuffled things around until she handed us the keys to an Audi A3, which happens to be the car I'd like very much to own. I did a happy dance, which amused them almost as much as our willingness to forgo with navigation in order to escape the Kia did.
After cooing over our temporary new baby, I pulled out the binder and offered Drew the three scenarios I'd prepared for our afternoon's drive to Rothenburg: (1) visit Nurnburg; (2) stop at towns along the Romantic Road; or (3) visit Regensburg. Since we'd just spent a lot of time in cities, smaller towns appealed, so we set out for the Romantic Road.
The autobahn was initially unexciting since most of the roads we've encountered thus far seem to be under construction. However, later in the evening we found a nice stretch without construction or tractor trailers, and Drew got to let loose for a bit after being passed by a Jag and BMW going at least 150 km/h. Since most of the Romantic Road isn't autobahn, he'll have to wait until tomorrow to drive even faster.
It rained off and on all day, which put a bit of a damper on our first stop, Donauworth, which was further complicated by being rush hour, albeit a tiny one. We wandered for only an hour between showers and grabbed some snacks, then kept going.
We stopped again in Dinkelsbuhl, which had it not been for Rothenburg today I would have said was the cutest place in the universe. We parked on one side of the river with ducks floating, crossed a quaint wooden bridge, and then strolled through the city walls onto the cobblestone-paved streets. The town looks like my mental image of Germany, adorable multistory, gabled houses, brightly painted, crowded together as though they're cuddling. It was after 7:00 p.m. when we arrived and all the shops closed at 6:00, so we were a couple of the handful of people on the streets. It was a little eerie, because it's clearly a tourist stop that had emptied out. Drew called it a "gingerbread zombie movie."
We wandered through the main square, through empty streets and around the city walls, finding the moat and several cool towers. We decided it was past time for dinner, having hardly eaten all day, and found to our amusement that most of the open restaurants were Italian, chockfull of locals. The restaurant we chose was run by a Tuscan family and after it became clear that the only two language options were German and Italian, Drew got us our table in German (using two of ten or so words, "zwei" and "bitte") and I did the rest in Italian. Whatever works.
It was after 10:00 p.m. when we arrived in Rothenburg, which didn't worry me because our hotel reservation said that they were open until 11:00. We found the hotel amazingly easily, considering that Rothenburg is a walled town with mazelike streets and few gates that allow cars through. Fortunately, our choice of a place on the south side when we were coming from the south worked to our advantage. Unfortunately, the innkeeper seemed to not be aware of their own policy of being open until 11:00, because he gave me a very hard time for being so late. My "we had a long trip from Bosnia today" did a bit to quell him; just mention Bosnia to Germans and their eyes get big, even bigger than to most Americans, since they were far more aware of the war than we were. He showed Drew where to park the car nearby and we clambered up to our room on the fourth floor, in the attic. It's really lovely, except for the 6"x12" giant photo of a beach somwhere tropical on one fo the slanted walls, which you can't help but stare at from the bed on the other side. Very disconcerting to try to fall asleep to that when you're in the heart of medieval Germany.
Yes, I know, getting out of order again; bear with me. It's going to take more time and energy than I have at the moment to describe the rest of our Bosnian adventure, so I'm going to skip to our flight back to Munich yesterday afternoon. I'll sum up Bosnia by saying it was fantastic and everyone should visit. More on that later.
After arriving in Munich (again) we picked up our rental car. When we began to discuss this trip one of our first mutual thoughts was ensuring somehow that we got a German car to drive on the autobahns. As you probably know, there's no way to reserve a particular car with any rental company (although I did hours of research trying to circumvent the system). In the end we got a good deal with Hertz for a car with navigation, which had VW Golf built into the group name (no "or similar" in sight). My theory was that with Hertz they generally try to make you happy and if we paid for a car with bells and whistles like navigation we'd have room to negotiate. My theory proved correct. They tried to give us a Kia, which made me frown less than a Ford would have, but still; I drive a Hyundai, so Kia isn't exactly exciting. I made my pitch for doing without navigation in order to please, please, please have a German car. They took pity on us and shuffled things around until she handed us the keys to an Audi A3, which happens to be the car I'd like very much to own. I did a happy dance, which amused them almost as much as our willingness to forgo with navigation in order to escape the Kia did.
After cooing over our temporary new baby, I pulled out the binder and offered Drew the three scenarios I'd prepared for our afternoon's drive to Rothenburg: (1) visit Nurnburg; (2) stop at towns along the Romantic Road; or (3) visit Regensburg. Since we'd just spent a lot of time in cities, smaller towns appealed, so we set out for the Romantic Road.
The autobahn was initially unexciting since most of the roads we've encountered thus far seem to be under construction. However, later in the evening we found a nice stretch without construction or tractor trailers, and Drew got to let loose for a bit after being passed by a Jag and BMW going at least 150 km/h. Since most of the Romantic Road isn't autobahn, he'll have to wait until tomorrow to drive even faster.
It rained off and on all day, which put a bit of a damper on our first stop, Donauworth, which was further complicated by being rush hour, albeit a tiny one. We wandered for only an hour between showers and grabbed some snacks, then kept going.
We stopped again in Dinkelsbuhl, which had it not been for Rothenburg today I would have said was the cutest place in the universe. We parked on one side of the river with ducks floating, crossed a quaint wooden bridge, and then strolled through the city walls onto the cobblestone-paved streets. The town looks like my mental image of Germany, adorable multistory, gabled houses, brightly painted, crowded together as though they're cuddling. It was after 7:00 p.m. when we arrived and all the shops closed at 6:00, so we were a couple of the handful of people on the streets. It was a little eerie, because it's clearly a tourist stop that had emptied out. Drew called it a "gingerbread zombie movie."
We wandered through the main square, through empty streets and around the city walls, finding the moat and several cool towers. We decided it was past time for dinner, having hardly eaten all day, and found to our amusement that most of the open restaurants were Italian, chockfull of locals. The restaurant we chose was run by a Tuscan family and after it became clear that the only two language options were German and Italian, Drew got us our table in German (using two of ten or so words, "zwei" and "bitte") and I did the rest in Italian. Whatever works.
It was after 10:00 p.m. when we arrived in Rothenburg, which didn't worry me because our hotel reservation said that they were open until 11:00. We found the hotel amazingly easily, considering that Rothenburg is a walled town with mazelike streets and few gates that allow cars through. Fortunately, our choice of a place on the south side when we were coming from the south worked to our advantage. Unfortunately, the innkeeper seemed to not be aware of their own policy of being open until 11:00, because he gave me a very hard time for being so late. My "we had a long trip from Bosnia today" did a bit to quell him; just mention Bosnia to Germans and their eyes get big, even bigger than to most Americans, since they were far more aware of the war than we were. He showed Drew where to park the car nearby and we clambered up to our room on the fourth floor, in the attic. It's really lovely, except for the 6"x12" giant photo of a beach somwhere tropical on one fo the slanted walls, which you can't help but stare at from the bed on the other side. Very disconcerting to try to fall asleep to that when you're in the heart of medieval Germany.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Rest of Monday in Sarajevo
Sarajevo Photos
After the Tunnel Museum we piled back into the car and headed into Sarajevo proper. There's only one main road into the city center (or "Centar," as it is so conveniently in Bosnian) and that road is probably the one of which you've seen photos. It's a wide multi-lane boulevard with a tram (one of the first electric ones in the world) running between. The buildings lining it still pockmarked from the attack on the city just over a decade ago provided a reminder, if having seen Welcome to Sarajevo recently wouldn't have done the trick, that we were very close to what was the front line of the war.
We drove past buildings that have yet to be rebuilt and aren't much more than rubble and the Holiday Inn, constructed for the Winter Olympics, that housed journalists during the war. We passed Marco's the Unitek towers, in which Marco now has his office, which had been fired upon and burned. There was plenty of new construction, much of which is quite recent (Michelle remarked on seeing new buildings since her last trip on one of our routes) and much of which they've seen happen over the course of their two years here. The signs of revitalization are inspiring, but the remnants of war are just plain devastating. Just before we turned the corner to head into the old town where they live, we passed the National Library, which was intentionally targeted and burned during the war, destroying many thousands of books. It's now surrounded by scaffolding but isn't being worked on continuously because of lack of funding.
Michelle and Marco live a few blocks above the Baščaršija square, where pigeons flock near a fountain that's provided the locals with water for hundreds of years. We stopped by their house to drop off our stuff and then set out on foot through the bazaar that sprung up during the rule of the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called Dveri, a cozy place decorated to feel like you're outside on a patio even though you're not. We were the only customers at that hour and enjoyed having the space to ourselves. Michelle ordered us kajmak and ustipak, which I could call cheese and bread but it wouldn't do either justice. I'll quote what kajmak is from our guidebook (the Bradt guide by Tim Clancy): "The most difficult of all cheeses to translate. It is the top layer skimmed from milk, creamy and extremely tasty." He's right. Ustipak is like a giant cinnamon roll without the cinnamon or icing. Put them together and ohmigod. We had a giant mound of the stuff for the table, and it was all gone by the end of the meal, mostly courtesy of Michelle and me (I spread it on my bifstek, which had to have been from a very recently deceased cow it was so fresh, and she ate what was left with her spoon). I'm still full from dinner tonight but now I could go for some kajmak. We were horrified to hear that folks here make pizza with ketchup and kajmak, which is about the only time I could see kajmak being ill-used.
Stuffed to the gills, Marco said it was time for coffee, at least for him and me. We walked a bit to the Morica Han, now a cafe and rug shop but formerly the hotel for all the visitors during Turkish days. Folks could stay for free if they didn't have enough money. We settled down in the comfy chairs surrounded by students filling the air with the smoke from their cigarettes (Everyone smokes here; why worry about lung cancer when you've survived a war? I'm serious; that's the justification.). Marco ordered the two of us "Bosnian coffee," which is the equivalent of Turkish coffee, but you can't tell a Bosnian that. It arrives in a shiny copper pot with a tiny cup like an espresso cup in a matching copper cupholder (as I termed it), to keep it hot. Accompanying it are lumps of sugar and Turkish delight (also don't call it that). You gently stir your coffee so that the grounds don't get too mixed in, then pour it in your cup. You then dip in your sugar cube and slowly eat it, sipping coffee along the way. The Turkish delight tastes a lot like rosewater, which I've decided makes sense because making food out of flowers is common (so I learned later). Properly drinking Bosnian coffee can take hours, but we didn't linger quite that long. I was lured over to the shop with Michelle pretty quickly; I plan to head back there tomorrow.
We returned to the house for a couple of hours and then Drew and I set off again on foot. We started off in Baščaršija again and joined the Sarajevans on their evening stroll, although to be fair there are always masses of people walking the Ferhadija, which is a pedestrian zone. It starts in the Turkish section and then moves through the part of town with the distinct Austro-Hungarian stamp on it. It's fun for people-watching and to see how thoroughly melded all the cultures and religions are here. You pass a mosque and then a church and then a mosque. We ended up in a hillside park where centuries-old gravestones compete with the new cemetaries that have necessarily sprung up all over the country. More than 11,000 people were killed in the city during the war.
We headed home for dinner and spent the evening hanging out with the family, hearing the muezzins from the many minarets all over the city call folks to prayer. I was enchanted by the sound, never having heard it before; I was disappointed not to have in Tangier. Since Sarajevo has almost 200 mosques and it lies in a valley, the sound echoes off the hills. It's really something. I was deeply disappointed the following day to find out that modern technology has long since reduced the number of actual muezzins making the call to a mere handful, but it still sounds neat even over the loudspeakers.
After the Tunnel Museum we piled back into the car and headed into Sarajevo proper. There's only one main road into the city center (or "Centar," as it is so conveniently in Bosnian) and that road is probably the one of which you've seen photos. It's a wide multi-lane boulevard with a tram (one of the first electric ones in the world) running between. The buildings lining it still pockmarked from the attack on the city just over a decade ago provided a reminder, if having seen Welcome to Sarajevo recently wouldn't have done the trick, that we were very close to what was the front line of the war.
We drove past buildings that have yet to be rebuilt and aren't much more than rubble and the Holiday Inn, constructed for the Winter Olympics, that housed journalists during the war. We passed Marco's the Unitek towers, in which Marco now has his office, which had been fired upon and burned. There was plenty of new construction, much of which is quite recent (Michelle remarked on seeing new buildings since her last trip on one of our routes) and much of which they've seen happen over the course of their two years here. The signs of revitalization are inspiring, but the remnants of war are just plain devastating. Just before we turned the corner to head into the old town where they live, we passed the National Library, which was intentionally targeted and burned during the war, destroying many thousands of books. It's now surrounded by scaffolding but isn't being worked on continuously because of lack of funding.
Michelle and Marco live a few blocks above the Baščaršija square, where pigeons flock near a fountain that's provided the locals with water for hundreds of years. We stopped by their house to drop off our stuff and then set out on foot through the bazaar that sprung up during the rule of the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called Dveri, a cozy place decorated to feel like you're outside on a patio even though you're not. We were the only customers at that hour and enjoyed having the space to ourselves. Michelle ordered us kajmak and ustipak, which I could call cheese and bread but it wouldn't do either justice. I'll quote what kajmak is from our guidebook (the Bradt guide by Tim Clancy): "The most difficult of all cheeses to translate. It is the top layer skimmed from milk, creamy and extremely tasty." He's right. Ustipak is like a giant cinnamon roll without the cinnamon or icing. Put them together and ohmigod. We had a giant mound of the stuff for the table, and it was all gone by the end of the meal, mostly courtesy of Michelle and me (I spread it on my bifstek, which had to have been from a very recently deceased cow it was so fresh, and she ate what was left with her spoon). I'm still full from dinner tonight but now I could go for some kajmak. We were horrified to hear that folks here make pizza with ketchup and kajmak, which is about the only time I could see kajmak being ill-used.
Stuffed to the gills, Marco said it was time for coffee, at least for him and me. We walked a bit to the Morica Han, now a cafe and rug shop but formerly the hotel for all the visitors during Turkish days. Folks could stay for free if they didn't have enough money. We settled down in the comfy chairs surrounded by students filling the air with the smoke from their cigarettes (Everyone smokes here; why worry about lung cancer when you've survived a war? I'm serious; that's the justification.). Marco ordered the two of us "Bosnian coffee," which is the equivalent of Turkish coffee, but you can't tell a Bosnian that. It arrives in a shiny copper pot with a tiny cup like an espresso cup in a matching copper cupholder (as I termed it), to keep it hot. Accompanying it are lumps of sugar and Turkish delight (also don't call it that). You gently stir your coffee so that the grounds don't get too mixed in, then pour it in your cup. You then dip in your sugar cube and slowly eat it, sipping coffee along the way. The Turkish delight tastes a lot like rosewater, which I've decided makes sense because making food out of flowers is common (so I learned later). Properly drinking Bosnian coffee can take hours, but we didn't linger quite that long. I was lured over to the shop with Michelle pretty quickly; I plan to head back there tomorrow.
We returned to the house for a couple of hours and then Drew and I set off again on foot. We started off in Baščaršija again and joined the Sarajevans on their evening stroll, although to be fair there are always masses of people walking the Ferhadija, which is a pedestrian zone. It starts in the Turkish section and then moves through the part of town with the distinct Austro-Hungarian stamp on it. It's fun for people-watching and to see how thoroughly melded all the cultures and religions are here. You pass a mosque and then a church and then a mosque. We ended up in a hillside park where centuries-old gravestones compete with the new cemetaries that have necessarily sprung up all over the country. More than 11,000 people were killed in the city during the war.
We headed home for dinner and spent the evening hanging out with the family, hearing the muezzins from the many minarets all over the city call folks to prayer. I was enchanted by the sound, never having heard it before; I was disappointed not to have in Tangier. Since Sarajevo has almost 200 mosques and it lies in a valley, the sound echoes off the hills. It's really something. I was deeply disappointed the following day to find out that modern technology has long since reduced the number of actual muezzins making the call to a mere handful, but it still sounds neat even over the loudspeakers.
Dachau and Three Pinacotheks on Sunday
Munich Photos
I'm happy it's been a few days since our visit to Dachau, because I might be ready to write about it at this point; on the day of, I couldn't really come up with the words to do so.
On Sunday morning we enjoyed our included breakfast at the hotel (I successfully ordered tea in German) and then headed to the Munich Hauptbahnhof station to catch an S-Bahn train to Dachau. It was weird to watch the schedule of trains and to see "Dachau: 3 min." as though that was a good thing.
Neither Drew nor I had thought about there being a town named Dachau, the reason for the name of the nearby concentration camp. It has about 40,000 people these days and appeared quite lovely as we took a bus through its streets from the train station. At one point during our audio tour of the camp, the "guide" mentioned that there had been a survery of the inhabitants following the war to find out if the townspeople knew or suspected what was happening right under their noses. The majority of folks pleaded ignorance.
The bus dropped us off right at the entrance of the camp memorial, where we picked up the audio guide and began our tour. The first thing to see was the area near the entrance, where recently the railroad tracks that delivered the prisoners as well as the road between the SS headquarters and the camp have been uncovered. The guide included prisoner testimonials of their arrival to this first Nazi concentration camp and the model of all that followed. Apparently it hasn't always been the case that visitors now walk the same route as the prisoners did, through the iron gates with the taunting and ironic message "Work Makes You Free" above it, beneath the towering guard house.
Upon entering you find yourself standing on the roll call grounds, where multiple times a day all the prisoners had to assemble. If anyone was missing, everyone had to wait until he was found, usually dead. From there we entered the museum, which is located in what was originally the buildings through which prisoners passed. We had expected to spend an hour or two at Dachau, tops, because it's not exactly Disneyland, but we ended up spending over two hours just in the museum, which is incredibly well done. It explores not only the history of Dachau, but also the rise of Nazism, the concentration camp system, and the lives of the prisoners from so many nations and religious and cultural backgrounds: before, during, and, for those who survived, after. You see all this while walking the same path they did, through the room where they were stripped of their possessions and logged in like items in inventory, through the showers where they were decontaminated and tortured, through the kitchens that never provided a sustainable amount of food. We were pretty drained just after the museum, but we were just getting started.
In front of the main building stands the memorial to the victims, in three parts. One is the famous sculpture by camp survivor Nandor Glid, part of the original memorial dedicated in the 1960's. There's another sculpture, which neither of us recognized, that shows the symbols that each prisoner had to where on his uniform, linked by chains. Finally the message "Never Again" in many languages is engraved on a wall above a capsule holding the ashes of many of the anonymous prisoners whose bodies were burned in the crematorium.
From there we walked over to the wall, which aside from an electrical fence, had a trench and a "kill zone" of several meters, where if you stepped in it you'd be shot. Apparently many prisoners intentionally crossed into the area to end their suffering. We were able to step through the gate and see the normal-looking road running along the side, where townspeople would have driven, right next to what had to be a frightening sight of machine-gun armed guards in their evenly-spaced towers. The image Dachau presented was intended to serve as a warning.
We then walked through one of the two reconstructed barracks buildings, envisioning how prisoners were packed in like sardines. The other many barracks were destroyed, but their outlines are clearly represented by walled areas filled with gravel. One of them was reserved for medical experiments on humans. A building toward the rear of the site housed a brothel where women prisoners imported from Ravensbruck concentration camp were brought to encourage productivity among the men.
At the rear of the camp are three religious memorials: one Protestant, one Catholic, and one Jewish. Each is beautifully designed, but the Protestant was my favorite, because it's designed without any right angles, in defiance to the Nazi tenet of absolute order in everything. It's a striking contrast to the stark, meticulously designed camp buildings.
From there we went to the crematoria, which was the most difficult part to tour. The first crematorium is the first thing you see; its capacity was too small, so they had to build the larger one, of course. In the larger crematorium building, there is first a waiting room, then a room to undress, and then the room with a sign "showers" above it, which leads, of course, to the gas chamber. Although prisoners weren't executed en masse using it as they were in others, it's still a horrifying place. Beyond that are the rooms where the dead were stacked awaiting cremation, and then the ovens, striking in their number, and more so because they still weren't enough for the masses of bodies. When there was a coal shortage the bodies piled up and they used mass graves instead. When the American forces arrived, they found train cars filled with dead bodies and more corpses in piles everywhere.
Around the crematoria are graves of ashes of the victims and the execution ground, where many were shot. It's actually a beautiful woodsy area, quiet except for the sound of birdsong.
We stopped by the Orthodox memorial before we headed out. The only bright side about Dachau is that the SS guards were imprisoned there afterward. It was difficult enough to be there as grandchildren of those who would have freed the prisoners of Dachau; German schoolchildren are required to visit the site now as a lesson. I can't imagine what that must feel like.
By then it was mid-afternoon and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We picked up sandwiches, apfelstrudel, and butterbreze (a pretzel sandwich with butter for the filling) from vendors at the train station and set out on foot to the museum district. We had a lovely picnic and enjoyed the sunny afternoon before beginning our museum blitz. Our guidebook told us that all three of the major art museums were only 1 Euro on Sundays, so we decided to do a very quick tour of all of them over the course of two hours. Yes, it was ambitious. It also turned out that the Alte Pinacothek, the museum with the old stuff, wasn't discounted. We decided to go through with it anyway, seeing more Rubens than I knew existed. Then it was on to the Neue Pinacothek and finally the Moderne. We finished the day off by collapsing on the grass in the park for several hours, my feet having had more than enough. I napped while Drew took pictures. It was another early night, since we had to pack up and head to the airport for Sarajevo the following morning.
I'm happy it's been a few days since our visit to Dachau, because I might be ready to write about it at this point; on the day of, I couldn't really come up with the words to do so.
On Sunday morning we enjoyed our included breakfast at the hotel (I successfully ordered tea in German) and then headed to the Munich Hauptbahnhof station to catch an S-Bahn train to Dachau. It was weird to watch the schedule of trains and to see "Dachau: 3 min." as though that was a good thing.
Neither Drew nor I had thought about there being a town named Dachau, the reason for the name of the nearby concentration camp. It has about 40,000 people these days and appeared quite lovely as we took a bus through its streets from the train station. At one point during our audio tour of the camp, the "guide" mentioned that there had been a survery of the inhabitants following the war to find out if the townspeople knew or suspected what was happening right under their noses. The majority of folks pleaded ignorance.
The bus dropped us off right at the entrance of the camp memorial, where we picked up the audio guide and began our tour. The first thing to see was the area near the entrance, where recently the railroad tracks that delivered the prisoners as well as the road between the SS headquarters and the camp have been uncovered. The guide included prisoner testimonials of their arrival to this first Nazi concentration camp and the model of all that followed. Apparently it hasn't always been the case that visitors now walk the same route as the prisoners did, through the iron gates with the taunting and ironic message "Work Makes You Free" above it, beneath the towering guard house.
Upon entering you find yourself standing on the roll call grounds, where multiple times a day all the prisoners had to assemble. If anyone was missing, everyone had to wait until he was found, usually dead. From there we entered the museum, which is located in what was originally the buildings through which prisoners passed. We had expected to spend an hour or two at Dachau, tops, because it's not exactly Disneyland, but we ended up spending over two hours just in the museum, which is incredibly well done. It explores not only the history of Dachau, but also the rise of Nazism, the concentration camp system, and the lives of the prisoners from so many nations and religious and cultural backgrounds: before, during, and, for those who survived, after. You see all this while walking the same path they did, through the room where they were stripped of their possessions and logged in like items in inventory, through the showers where they were decontaminated and tortured, through the kitchens that never provided a sustainable amount of food. We were pretty drained just after the museum, but we were just getting started.
In front of the main building stands the memorial to the victims, in three parts. One is the famous sculpture by camp survivor Nandor Glid, part of the original memorial dedicated in the 1960's. There's another sculpture, which neither of us recognized, that shows the symbols that each prisoner had to where on his uniform, linked by chains. Finally the message "Never Again" in many languages is engraved on a wall above a capsule holding the ashes of many of the anonymous prisoners whose bodies were burned in the crematorium.
From there we walked over to the wall, which aside from an electrical fence, had a trench and a "kill zone" of several meters, where if you stepped in it you'd be shot. Apparently many prisoners intentionally crossed into the area to end their suffering. We were able to step through the gate and see the normal-looking road running along the side, where townspeople would have driven, right next to what had to be a frightening sight of machine-gun armed guards in their evenly-spaced towers. The image Dachau presented was intended to serve as a warning.
We then walked through one of the two reconstructed barracks buildings, envisioning how prisoners were packed in like sardines. The other many barracks were destroyed, but their outlines are clearly represented by walled areas filled with gravel. One of them was reserved for medical experiments on humans. A building toward the rear of the site housed a brothel where women prisoners imported from Ravensbruck concentration camp were brought to encourage productivity among the men.
At the rear of the camp are three religious memorials: one Protestant, one Catholic, and one Jewish. Each is beautifully designed, but the Protestant was my favorite, because it's designed without any right angles, in defiance to the Nazi tenet of absolute order in everything. It's a striking contrast to the stark, meticulously designed camp buildings.
From there we went to the crematoria, which was the most difficult part to tour. The first crematorium is the first thing you see; its capacity was too small, so they had to build the larger one, of course. In the larger crematorium building, there is first a waiting room, then a room to undress, and then the room with a sign "showers" above it, which leads, of course, to the gas chamber. Although prisoners weren't executed en masse using it as they were in others, it's still a horrifying place. Beyond that are the rooms where the dead were stacked awaiting cremation, and then the ovens, striking in their number, and more so because they still weren't enough for the masses of bodies. When there was a coal shortage the bodies piled up and they used mass graves instead. When the American forces arrived, they found train cars filled with dead bodies and more corpses in piles everywhere.
Around the crematoria are graves of ashes of the victims and the execution ground, where many were shot. It's actually a beautiful woodsy area, quiet except for the sound of birdsong.
We stopped by the Orthodox memorial before we headed out. The only bright side about Dachau is that the SS guards were imprisoned there afterward. It was difficult enough to be there as grandchildren of those who would have freed the prisoners of Dachau; German schoolchildren are required to visit the site now as a lesson. I can't imagine what that must feel like.
By then it was mid-afternoon and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We picked up sandwiches, apfelstrudel, and butterbreze (a pretzel sandwich with butter for the filling) from vendors at the train station and set out on foot to the museum district. We had a lovely picnic and enjoyed the sunny afternoon before beginning our museum blitz. Our guidebook told us that all three of the major art museums were only 1 Euro on Sundays, so we decided to do a very quick tour of all of them over the course of two hours. Yes, it was ambitious. It also turned out that the Alte Pinacothek, the museum with the old stuff, wasn't discounted. We decided to go through with it anyway, seeing more Rubens than I knew existed. Then it was on to the Neue Pinacothek and finally the Moderne. We finished the day off by collapsing on the grass in the park for several hours, my feet having had more than enough. I napped while Drew took pictures. It was another early night, since we had to pack up and head to the airport for Sarajevo the following morning.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Rewind to Munich on Saturday
Munich Photos
We're now going back to Saturday night in Munich.
After climbing down from the church tower we did as Muencheners do and grabbed food and ate outside, despite the rain, which had returned. We opted out of drinking huge steins of beer while eating, which is the normal way of doing things here, but neither of us drink beer. I'm starting to wish I did, because it's such an integral part of everyday life.
Every building or museum we might have wanted to tour was closed by the time we finished eating, so we decided to wander north of Marienplatz and simply explore. We passed the ginormous Residenz, once the opulent palace of the Bavarian ruling family, the Wittelsbachs, who apparently are still around but have "real jobs" now, according to Rick, now that they don't have anything to rule. The Odeonsplatz, which seems like something straight out of Rome or Athens (actually, both), was nearby, with giant statues, columns, and open space fit for a Nazi rally. From there we strolled through the Hofgarten, a very elegant, manicured, symmetrical space with a temple in the middle, where folks like us sought a temporary respite from the rain.
And then it was on to the English Garden, which is the biggest city park in Continental Europe. It reminded me of a garden Capability Brown or one of his cronies might have created in—you guessed it—England, but in fact it was designed by an American upstart (I'm sure) of the same period. Flowing green lawns are bisected by a very well-organized, swiftly-running stream, that winds all through the park, splitting and rejoining and creating waterfalls and ponds. Always a fan of any stream, I was enamored, even more so when we found what we knew we'd find courtesy of the umpteen travel videos we watched before our trip: surfers. We can't figure out exactly why or if it's even intentional, but there's a big set of rapids that creates an eternal wave, apparently ideal for surfing. At the time of our visit, there were five on each side of the stream, which was more of a small river at this point, taking turns hopping into the water to tackle the wave, with varying amount of success. Some wiped out immediately, only to be grabbed by the current, fight to shore, and come back for more. Others gracefully tossed their boards out and leapt onto them, seeming to be able to surf forever were it not for their sense of fairness, eventually casually diving in and, yep, coming back for more. We stayed there for quite a while, enjoying their illegal antics (there's a big surfing and swimming verboten sign right in front of them).
I'm not sure where exactly we went next, but we found plenty of neat things to see, gardens tucked in between what were probably government buildings and such. It's a very well-planned city with an eye toward public space. I don't think I've mentioned how bike-friendly it is also. When we first arrived we had a hard time not getting hit by cyclists before we realized that the sidewalks are divided into bike and pedestrian lanes, much like they are along some beaches and such in the States, but here it's everywhere. [Drew just commented on how I'm writing the longest sentences ever, that commas must be cheaper than periods, to which I replied that as long as they're used correctly, it doesn't matter. If George Eliot can, then so can I, although not as well. We're sitting in the Munich airport on Monday about to depart for Sarajevo, by the way.]
We decided that even though we're not beer-drinkers or sauerkraut-eaters, we should put in an appearance at the Hofbrauhaus to get our oompah on. It was maybe 60 degrees F outside, compared to what seemed to be a balmy 85 in the beer hall, courtesy of the masses of people packing it into the gills. The lederhosen and dirndl-bedecked band had trouble competing with the rowdy beer-swillers, digging into their plates loaded with towers of meat and potatoes and chugging their nearly gallon-sized beers. We snapped a few photos, tried not to trip over the Americans...
At this point in my writing, I heard someone call my name. This was surprising, since Drew was sitting next to me and no one in the Munich airport should know me as Casey. Turns out I was wrong, since my uncle Ken suddenly appeared in front of us. He and my aunt Trisha were on their way back from Sarajevo, just as we were headed there. He was taking a walk around the airport before their trip to Charlotte when he happened upon us. After we got over our shock, we hopped up and walked briskly from gate 39 to gate 10, where Trisha was waiting. We enjoyed our 10 minutes of catching up with them before we had to hurry back to our gate to board our own flight. What a cosmopolitan family, meeting in passing in Munich.
Now we're sitting in Michelle and Marco's living room in Sarajevo on Monday, with two banks of windows giving us views over the city and the hills. We just heard the muezzins all over the city call folks to prayer. It's started pouring rain and we're hoping it'll stop before morning.
Back to Munich and the Hofbrauhaus. Right, we were trying to avoid tripping over Americans who'd had a few too many (and it was only 8ish). That's about it for Saturday; jetlag was rapidly reclaiming us. On the way back to the hotel someone stopped us and asked us for directions. We've decided we don't like looking like we could be German because we end up disappointing people.
We're now going back to Saturday night in Munich.
After climbing down from the church tower we did as Muencheners do and grabbed food and ate outside, despite the rain, which had returned. We opted out of drinking huge steins of beer while eating, which is the normal way of doing things here, but neither of us drink beer. I'm starting to wish I did, because it's such an integral part of everyday life.
Every building or museum we might have wanted to tour was closed by the time we finished eating, so we decided to wander north of Marienplatz and simply explore. We passed the ginormous Residenz, once the opulent palace of the Bavarian ruling family, the Wittelsbachs, who apparently are still around but have "real jobs" now, according to Rick, now that they don't have anything to rule. The Odeonsplatz, which seems like something straight out of Rome or Athens (actually, both), was nearby, with giant statues, columns, and open space fit for a Nazi rally. From there we strolled through the Hofgarten, a very elegant, manicured, symmetrical space with a temple in the middle, where folks like us sought a temporary respite from the rain.
And then it was on to the English Garden, which is the biggest city park in Continental Europe. It reminded me of a garden Capability Brown or one of his cronies might have created in—you guessed it—England, but in fact it was designed by an American upstart (I'm sure) of the same period. Flowing green lawns are bisected by a very well-organized, swiftly-running stream, that winds all through the park, splitting and rejoining and creating waterfalls and ponds. Always a fan of any stream, I was enamored, even more so when we found what we knew we'd find courtesy of the umpteen travel videos we watched before our trip: surfers. We can't figure out exactly why or if it's even intentional, but there's a big set of rapids that creates an eternal wave, apparently ideal for surfing. At the time of our visit, there were five on each side of the stream, which was more of a small river at this point, taking turns hopping into the water to tackle the wave, with varying amount of success. Some wiped out immediately, only to be grabbed by the current, fight to shore, and come back for more. Others gracefully tossed their boards out and leapt onto them, seeming to be able to surf forever were it not for their sense of fairness, eventually casually diving in and, yep, coming back for more. We stayed there for quite a while, enjoying their illegal antics (there's a big surfing and swimming verboten sign right in front of them).
I'm not sure where exactly we went next, but we found plenty of neat things to see, gardens tucked in between what were probably government buildings and such. It's a very well-planned city with an eye toward public space. I don't think I've mentioned how bike-friendly it is also. When we first arrived we had a hard time not getting hit by cyclists before we realized that the sidewalks are divided into bike and pedestrian lanes, much like they are along some beaches and such in the States, but here it's everywhere. [Drew just commented on how I'm writing the longest sentences ever, that commas must be cheaper than periods, to which I replied that as long as they're used correctly, it doesn't matter. If George Eliot can, then so can I, although not as well. We're sitting in the Munich airport on Monday about to depart for Sarajevo, by the way.]
We decided that even though we're not beer-drinkers or sauerkraut-eaters, we should put in an appearance at the Hofbrauhaus to get our oompah on. It was maybe 60 degrees F outside, compared to what seemed to be a balmy 85 in the beer hall, courtesy of the masses of people packing it into the gills. The lederhosen and dirndl-bedecked band had trouble competing with the rowdy beer-swillers, digging into their plates loaded with towers of meat and potatoes and chugging their nearly gallon-sized beers. We snapped a few photos, tried not to trip over the Americans...
At this point in my writing, I heard someone call my name. This was surprising, since Drew was sitting next to me and no one in the Munich airport should know me as Casey. Turns out I was wrong, since my uncle Ken suddenly appeared in front of us. He and my aunt Trisha were on their way back from Sarajevo, just as we were headed there. He was taking a walk around the airport before their trip to Charlotte when he happened upon us. After we got over our shock, we hopped up and walked briskly from gate 39 to gate 10, where Trisha was waiting. We enjoyed our 10 minutes of catching up with them before we had to hurry back to our gate to board our own flight. What a cosmopolitan family, meeting in passing in Munich.
Now we're sitting in Michelle and Marco's living room in Sarajevo on Monday, with two banks of windows giving us views over the city and the hills. We just heard the muezzins all over the city call folks to prayer. It's started pouring rain and we're hoping it'll stop before morning.
Back to Munich and the Hofbrauhaus. Right, we were trying to avoid tripping over Americans who'd had a few too many (and it was only 8ish). That's about it for Saturday; jetlag was rapidly reclaiming us. On the way back to the hotel someone stopped us and asked us for directions. We've decided we don't like looking like we could be German because we end up disappointing people.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Welcome to Sarajevo
Sarajevo Photos
Sorry, couldn't resist. It was way weirder when the flight attendant said that to us on the plane. People haven't stopped welcoming us to Sarajevo since we got here, which is bizarre since all I can think about is the movie.
I've been writing more installments of the blog, but I haven't had access to the Internet until now, the evening of our arrival in Sarajevo at the home of my cousin, Michelle, and her husband Marco. Unfortunately, we don't have the password to their wireless network, so I'm not on my own laptop. Thus you'll have to wait until tomorrow for me to copy and paste what I've written since Saturday about the rest of our time in Munich. I'll skip ahead to Sarajevo so that Munich—including a very exciting surprise at the airport—can be a separate entry. Sorry to be disjointed, but as I told one reader earlier who was making suggestions about the blog, we're still on vacation here, folks.
The flight to Sarajevo was interesting in only small ways, in that I was one of only a handful of women on it and there were a bunch of military types on it as well. There's still an international military presence here. Also, everyone opted to drink beer and/or wine, even though it was barely noon. I realize that's an American observation, but it was amusing how much bottle clinking was happening. Of course, everyone was drinking in appropriately European moderation.
It took us less than two hours to get from Germany to Bosnia. As we taxied I thought about the scene in the movie with the UN press conference at the airport, during which a nearly-empty plane took off, not taking any of the Bosnian children to safety because that would have violated the terms of their mission. I'm hazy on the details of how that worked, although talking with Marco has helped clarify that part of my confusion is the result of it being a big mess of international proportions. Initially the UN was at the airport only to protect it, with nothing allowed to go in or out. Compound that with a munitions embargo because it was a civil war, so that the people of Sarajevo were sitting ducks as they were under siege with no weapons coming in to protect themselves, while being surrounded by the Yugoslav army with mortars and long-range rifles.
Back to the airport. It's easy to get sidetracked with recent history, since it's so thoroughly present here.
When we disembarked we were startled to see that the signs were first in English, second in Bosnian. That's only the case as the airport, not the rest of town, but it was certainly handy for us. It's a testament to how much international involvement there's been here in the past decade. The airport is tiny, pristine, and efficient. We were through passport control and baggage claim, meeting Michelle and Marco, within 15 minutes of landing. Their car was about a minute outside of the airport.
We jumped right into our visit by touring the Tunnel Museum, which is just on the other side of the airport. As we circumnavigated the airfield to get there, the signs of the recent war were already apparent, in the form of buildings pock-marked from shrapnel of mortar fire and brand-new construction to replace what had to be torn down. I was impressed at Michelle's finding the museum, since it's located through a neighborhood and a field; she commented that the first time she visited it was in the snow over unplowed roads. [The muezzins are at it again, by the way; we're surrounded by mosques and the sound of their calls echoes through the hills.] Before we got there she mentioned that it's an informal, family-run affair, and it is that; we parked in their driveway and met one of them on the way in, saying hi to their cat, who was perched on a sandbag.
The tunnel was built by the Bosnian army and volunteers during the war as the only way in and out of the besieged Sarajevo. It ran from a beneath an apartment building on the other side of the airport, beneath the airport, to the basement of the family's home. We saw a home-made video comprised of footage from the mortar fire on the city and the tunnel in action, which showed at one point the opposing army passing right outside the house but never knowing the tunnel was there. There was also a display of all the dignitaries and celebrities who've visited the museum, including Richard Holbrooke, who was one of the major players in the peace accord and is now working on our behalf in Afghanistan and Pakistan (the man doesn't like to take it easy). Daniel Craig, Richard Gere, Juliet Binoche, and Emily Watson were among the celebrities.
The pinnacle of the museum visit is going through what remains of the tunnel on this side, before it caved in from the weight of the planes at the airport. It's quite an eye-opening experience to hunch over in the cramped space, picturing it at least ankle-deep in water, trying to push an injured friend or family member on a cart to safety or to bring in loads of food for those starving in the city. Very few people escaped this way, since there wasn't exactly a great option for escaping further what with the army all around, but supplies got into the city that way, which was life-saving. In this place among many others here, it's hard not to shudder because it's at once so terrible and so recent.
That's all I have in me for now. There was more to our first day in Sarajevo and I hope there will be even more on our second, if only it'll stop pouring down rain. We can take a gentle shower, but we're not so into traipsing about drenched. I suppose a day of rest visiting with family couldn't hurt, though.
Sorry, couldn't resist. It was way weirder when the flight attendant said that to us on the plane. People haven't stopped welcoming us to Sarajevo since we got here, which is bizarre since all I can think about is the movie.
I've been writing more installments of the blog, but I haven't had access to the Internet until now, the evening of our arrival in Sarajevo at the home of my cousin, Michelle, and her husband Marco. Unfortunately, we don't have the password to their wireless network, so I'm not on my own laptop. Thus you'll have to wait until tomorrow for me to copy and paste what I've written since Saturday about the rest of our time in Munich. I'll skip ahead to Sarajevo so that Munich—including a very exciting surprise at the airport—can be a separate entry. Sorry to be disjointed, but as I told one reader earlier who was making suggestions about the blog, we're still on vacation here, folks.
The flight to Sarajevo was interesting in only small ways, in that I was one of only a handful of women on it and there were a bunch of military types on it as well. There's still an international military presence here. Also, everyone opted to drink beer and/or wine, even though it was barely noon. I realize that's an American observation, but it was amusing how much bottle clinking was happening. Of course, everyone was drinking in appropriately European moderation.
It took us less than two hours to get from Germany to Bosnia. As we taxied I thought about the scene in the movie with the UN press conference at the airport, during which a nearly-empty plane took off, not taking any of the Bosnian children to safety because that would have violated the terms of their mission. I'm hazy on the details of how that worked, although talking with Marco has helped clarify that part of my confusion is the result of it being a big mess of international proportions. Initially the UN was at the airport only to protect it, with nothing allowed to go in or out. Compound that with a munitions embargo because it was a civil war, so that the people of Sarajevo were sitting ducks as they were under siege with no weapons coming in to protect themselves, while being surrounded by the Yugoslav army with mortars and long-range rifles.
Back to the airport. It's easy to get sidetracked with recent history, since it's so thoroughly present here.
When we disembarked we were startled to see that the signs were first in English, second in Bosnian. That's only the case as the airport, not the rest of town, but it was certainly handy for us. It's a testament to how much international involvement there's been here in the past decade. The airport is tiny, pristine, and efficient. We were through passport control and baggage claim, meeting Michelle and Marco, within 15 minutes of landing. Their car was about a minute outside of the airport.
We jumped right into our visit by touring the Tunnel Museum, which is just on the other side of the airport. As we circumnavigated the airfield to get there, the signs of the recent war were already apparent, in the form of buildings pock-marked from shrapnel of mortar fire and brand-new construction to replace what had to be torn down. I was impressed at Michelle's finding the museum, since it's located through a neighborhood and a field; she commented that the first time she visited it was in the snow over unplowed roads. [The muezzins are at it again, by the way; we're surrounded by mosques and the sound of their calls echoes through the hills.] Before we got there she mentioned that it's an informal, family-run affair, and it is that; we parked in their driveway and met one of them on the way in, saying hi to their cat, who was perched on a sandbag.
The tunnel was built by the Bosnian army and volunteers during the war as the only way in and out of the besieged Sarajevo. It ran from a beneath an apartment building on the other side of the airport, beneath the airport, to the basement of the family's home. We saw a home-made video comprised of footage from the mortar fire on the city and the tunnel in action, which showed at one point the opposing army passing right outside the house but never knowing the tunnel was there. There was also a display of all the dignitaries and celebrities who've visited the museum, including Richard Holbrooke, who was one of the major players in the peace accord and is now working on our behalf in Afghanistan and Pakistan (the man doesn't like to take it easy). Daniel Craig, Richard Gere, Juliet Binoche, and Emily Watson were among the celebrities.
The pinnacle of the museum visit is going through what remains of the tunnel on this side, before it caved in from the weight of the planes at the airport. It's quite an eye-opening experience to hunch over in the cramped space, picturing it at least ankle-deep in water, trying to push an injured friend or family member on a cart to safety or to bring in loads of food for those starving in the city. Very few people escaped this way, since there wasn't exactly a great option for escaping further what with the army all around, but supplies got into the city that way, which was life-saving. In this place among many others here, it's hard not to shudder because it's at once so terrible and so recent.
That's all I have in me for now. There was more to our first day in Sarajevo and I hope there will be even more on our second, if only it'll stop pouring down rain. We can take a gentle shower, but we're not so into traipsing about drenched. I suppose a day of rest visiting with family couldn't hurt, though.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Munich: Short and Sweet
Munich Photos
After a woefully insufficient nap, we headed back out around 4:00 p.m. with plans to climb one of the church towers near Marienplatz. We decided to walk there, since the hotel folks told us it would only take 20 minutes, and it takes half that just to get to the subway station. We were pleased we took their advice, because strolling through this part of Munich, which is near the Oktoberfest fairgrounds but nothing else touristy is a delight. None of the buildings are more than maybe 5 levels, I think because of a rule similar to D.C.'s that keeps everything about the height of the historic and reconstructed-post-bombing buildings throughout the city. It lends the city an almost small-town feeling despite its size and cosmopolitan atmosphere.
This is also the cleanest European city we've ever visited, hands down. Drew made an Eddie Izzard reference, "I love the way Europe smells in the morning," only to have us pause and realize that Munich doens't smell at all like Europe. It's lovely. It's also a city of dogs and responsible dog-parents. Yay.
Anyway, we wended our way to St. Peter's Church and after stumbling through a mass of German-language confusion, climbed to the top. St. Peter's is the oldest church in Munich and, like many of the others, was bombed to hell and back during WW2. It, like the others, was reconstructed beautifully, which is a little weird in that someo of the buildings look like brand-new old buildings, if that makes any sense. Drew called one of them "Disney-like." The New Town Hall is actually one of the youngest buildings but it looks the oldest.
OK, St. Peter's. I've climbed to the top of a lot of churches and other buildings around Europe, and this one wins the prize of worst planning, but does stand shoulder to shoulder with the others in the view category. All 306 steps are on rickety-feeling wooden supports that made us earthquake-country folk shudder. They're narrow, allowing room for only one person, but there's only one way to get to the top and back down.There are also no employees anywhere on the route to/from the top (probably because they wouldn't fit) to help direct traffic. The result is pretty much a mess, particularly for non-German-speakers who are wary of offending others. We did a lot of pausing, smiling, nodding, and squishing past people as carefully as possible. I can't imagine what it's like during the high tourist season in the summer.
All of that said, once we finally made it to the top the view was truly stunning. The church spires do literally tower over the rest of the buildings, allowing for unobstructed views. The rain had paused for a bit and the clouds had cleared to some extent, allowing us to see the Alps to the south. It was also helpful to be able to have Munich spread beneath us like a living map, so I could point and say, "We're going there next... Oh, that's where that is," etc. We highly recommend a trip to the top, despite the logistical challenges. Try to stay long enough to be next to bells when they ring, which is so often that that's manageable. It seems like all the bell towers in Munich aren't actually coordinated with any regular schedule and thus it seems there's a bell always ringing somewhere.
It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard, so that's all for now. Tune in tomorrow to hear about how we had to come all the way from California to a city park in Munich to see people surf a proper wave.
After a woefully insufficient nap, we headed back out around 4:00 p.m. with plans to climb one of the church towers near Marienplatz. We decided to walk there, since the hotel folks told us it would only take 20 minutes, and it takes half that just to get to the subway station. We were pleased we took their advice, because strolling through this part of Munich, which is near the Oktoberfest fairgrounds but nothing else touristy is a delight. None of the buildings are more than maybe 5 levels, I think because of a rule similar to D.C.'s that keeps everything about the height of the historic and reconstructed-post-bombing buildings throughout the city. It lends the city an almost small-town feeling despite its size and cosmopolitan atmosphere.
This is also the cleanest European city we've ever visited, hands down. Drew made an Eddie Izzard reference, "I love the way Europe smells in the morning," only to have us pause and realize that Munich doens't smell at all like Europe. It's lovely. It's also a city of dogs and responsible dog-parents. Yay.
Anyway, we wended our way to St. Peter's Church and after stumbling through a mass of German-language confusion, climbed to the top. St. Peter's is the oldest church in Munich and, like many of the others, was bombed to hell and back during WW2. It, like the others, was reconstructed beautifully, which is a little weird in that someo of the buildings look like brand-new old buildings, if that makes any sense. Drew called one of them "Disney-like." The New Town Hall is actually one of the youngest buildings but it looks the oldest.
OK, St. Peter's. I've climbed to the top of a lot of churches and other buildings around Europe, and this one wins the prize of worst planning, but does stand shoulder to shoulder with the others in the view category. All 306 steps are on rickety-feeling wooden supports that made us earthquake-country folk shudder. They're narrow, allowing room for only one person, but there's only one way to get to the top and back down.There are also no employees anywhere on the route to/from the top (probably because they wouldn't fit) to help direct traffic. The result is pretty much a mess, particularly for non-German-speakers who are wary of offending others. We did a lot of pausing, smiling, nodding, and squishing past people as carefully as possible. I can't imagine what it's like during the high tourist season in the summer.
All of that said, once we finally made it to the top the view was truly stunning. The church spires do literally tower over the rest of the buildings, allowing for unobstructed views. The rain had paused for a bit and the clouds had cleared to some extent, allowing us to see the Alps to the south. It was also helpful to be able to have Munich spread beneath us like a living map, so I could point and say, "We're going there next... Oh, that's where that is," etc. We highly recommend a trip to the top, despite the logistical challenges. Try to stay long enough to be next to bells when they ring, which is so often that that's manageable. It seems like all the bell towers in Munich aren't actually coordinated with any regular schedule and thus it seems there's a bell always ringing somewhere.
It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard, so that's all for now. Tune in tomorrow to hear about how we had to come all the way from California to a city park in Munich to see people surf a proper wave.
Too Jet-lagged to Come Up with a Snappy Title
The captain of our first flight said, "If it's any consolation, that was the bumpiest ride I've had in at least a year." But we were two minutes early, which is pretty fantastic for us.
After leaving said flight, getting what I suppose is technically dinner at this point, eating it, and heading to our next gate, Drew realized that he didn't have his coat. We returned to the original gate and they had it.
We're waiting for the other shoe to drop while sitting among Germans and blending in far better than we did on our flight to Madrid. Hopefully no one will try to talk to us.
Many hours later...
For reasons unknown to us, United put us in Economy Plus without our having to pay for it. We didn't object and enjoyed our Chicago to Munich flight more because of it. Unfortunately, neither of us managed to sleep at all. I mistakenly watched Seven Pounds and ended up exacerbating my already sniffly state, but watching Transporter 3 (again) without the sound but with its wonderfully unlikely action-packed scenes helped balance that out. We'd be happy to get an Audi like Frank's, but hope to avoid his shenanigans, particularly the part in the river, having to suck air out of the tires to avoid drowning.
We made it through passport control without having to speak, which was good because by then we were slap-happy and pretty much everything in German sounded hilarious. Walking through customs, one officer sneezed and we heard our first authentic "Gesundheit!" "Danke!" exchange. We joked that we'd be OK if we were only following people sneezing, but otherwise we're lost with the language.
I'd researched how to take the train from the airport into Munich and thanks to Rick Steves knew about the multi-zone, all-day pass for families (5 people and a dog for 9 Euros!), which we managed to procure, but we forgot the most important part, which I'd helpfully noted on a sticky note that I neglected to read, which was validating the ticket before getting on the train. We took it as far as the next stop, got off, validated, and hung out at the nearly empty stop for 20 minutes waiting for the next one. That gave me time to get properly organized with The Binder and for Drew to take what I'm assuming were artistic subway photos. In doing so I realized that if we went to our hotel immediately as planned we'd miss the second of two daily glockenspiel "shows" at the New Town Hall in Marienplatz, so we decided to stop there en route, luggage and all.
Rick Steves said something about how you'd get your first beautiful glimpse of the real Munich upon riding up the escalator from the subway into the square, but he didn't mention which exit to use to avoid first seeing the Apple Store upon arising from the depths. I suppose that's better than a McDonald's. Anyway, Marienplatz is quintessentially German-looking (or at least it fit my mental image of Germany) and it was overflowing with Germans, locals and tourists alike. We really do blend here. I was remarking on that, I think, as we donned our sunglasses in the midst of a throroughly overcast day and realized we were the two out of several hundred people who thought it was bright. Between that and the luggage we were getting a big FAIL for blending, so we opted to squint, feeling much as we did in NYC, where the sun doesn't seem to bother people either.
We only had to wait 15 minutes for the glockenspiel extravaganza, during which time we soaked up the atmosphere, looking forward to returning later sans baggage. The hour began to strike noon at one of the many churches surrounding the square, and the others followed suit, creating a cacophony of bells. The New Town Hall was the last to go and the glockenspiel began before the figurines mounted in the tower began moving, so I took and discarded several videos on your behalf before (hopefully) capturing the excitement, which I'll share when I can figure out how. Basically the figures go in a circle and the same poor guy gets shoved off his horse twice daily, as it has for 100 years or so.
We ducked back into the subway as it began to rain. I took note of the food stalls with the mouth-watering array of pretzels and decadent pastries for future reference. We were only two stops away from Hauptbahnhof, the train station, which is the closest stop to our hotel, Hotel Uhland. We opted to walk 10 minutes to get there instead of taking the bus, which we might try to figure out later if we get more motivated. Right now it's time to nap before we locate what I suppose will be late lunch/early dinner in the Viktualienmarkt.
After leaving said flight, getting what I suppose is technically dinner at this point, eating it, and heading to our next gate, Drew realized that he didn't have his coat. We returned to the original gate and they had it.
We're waiting for the other shoe to drop while sitting among Germans and blending in far better than we did on our flight to Madrid. Hopefully no one will try to talk to us.
Many hours later...
For reasons unknown to us, United put us in Economy Plus without our having to pay for it. We didn't object and enjoyed our Chicago to Munich flight more because of it. Unfortunately, neither of us managed to sleep at all. I mistakenly watched Seven Pounds and ended up exacerbating my already sniffly state, but watching Transporter 3 (again) without the sound but with its wonderfully unlikely action-packed scenes helped balance that out. We'd be happy to get an Audi like Frank's, but hope to avoid his shenanigans, particularly the part in the river, having to suck air out of the tires to avoid drowning.
We made it through passport control without having to speak, which was good because by then we were slap-happy and pretty much everything in German sounded hilarious. Walking through customs, one officer sneezed and we heard our first authentic "Gesundheit!" "Danke!" exchange. We joked that we'd be OK if we were only following people sneezing, but otherwise we're lost with the language.
I'd researched how to take the train from the airport into Munich and thanks to Rick Steves knew about the multi-zone, all-day pass for families (5 people and a dog for 9 Euros!), which we managed to procure, but we forgot the most important part, which I'd helpfully noted on a sticky note that I neglected to read, which was validating the ticket before getting on the train. We took it as far as the next stop, got off, validated, and hung out at the nearly empty stop for 20 minutes waiting for the next one. That gave me time to get properly organized with The Binder and for Drew to take what I'm assuming were artistic subway photos. In doing so I realized that if we went to our hotel immediately as planned we'd miss the second of two daily glockenspiel "shows" at the New Town Hall in Marienplatz, so we decided to stop there en route, luggage and all.
Rick Steves said something about how you'd get your first beautiful glimpse of the real Munich upon riding up the escalator from the subway into the square, but he didn't mention which exit to use to avoid first seeing the Apple Store upon arising from the depths. I suppose that's better than a McDonald's. Anyway, Marienplatz is quintessentially German-looking (or at least it fit my mental image of Germany) and it was overflowing with Germans, locals and tourists alike. We really do blend here. I was remarking on that, I think, as we donned our sunglasses in the midst of a throroughly overcast day and realized we were the two out of several hundred people who thought it was bright. Between that and the luggage we were getting a big FAIL for blending, so we opted to squint, feeling much as we did in NYC, where the sun doesn't seem to bother people either.
We only had to wait 15 minutes for the glockenspiel extravaganza, during which time we soaked up the atmosphere, looking forward to returning later sans baggage. The hour began to strike noon at one of the many churches surrounding the square, and the others followed suit, creating a cacophony of bells. The New Town Hall was the last to go and the glockenspiel began before the figurines mounted in the tower began moving, so I took and discarded several videos on your behalf before (hopefully) capturing the excitement, which I'll share when I can figure out how. Basically the figures go in a circle and the same poor guy gets shoved off his horse twice daily, as it has for 100 years or so.
We ducked back into the subway as it began to rain. I took note of the food stalls with the mouth-watering array of pretzels and decadent pastries for future reference. We were only two stops away from Hauptbahnhof, the train station, which is the closest stop to our hotel, Hotel Uhland. We opted to walk 10 minutes to get there instead of taking the bus, which we might try to figure out later if we get more motivated. Right now it's time to nap before we locate what I suppose will be late lunch/early dinner in the Viktualienmarkt.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Itinerary for Spring 2009 Trip
I've failed completely at writing about Spain and Morocco before departing, but I'm sure my memories of that trip won't get mixed up with the forthcoming one.
We're scheduled to fly to Munich tomorrow morning (Friday), arriving on Saturday morning. I say "scheduled to" intentionally, because I don't want to jinx it. Drew has perennially bad luck with flying, which rubs off on me, so we can use all the help we can get.
To sum up our itinerary, this is where we'll be sleeping (where we'll be during the day will vary quite a bit):
We're scheduled to fly to Munich tomorrow morning (Friday), arriving on Saturday morning. I say "scheduled to" intentionally, because I don't want to jinx it. Drew has perennially bad luck with flying, which rubs off on me, so we can use all the help we can get.
To sum up our itinerary, this is where we'll be sleeping (where we'll be during the day will vary quite a bit):
- April 18–19: Munich, Germany
- April 20–22: Sarajevo, Bosnia
- April 23–24: Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany
- April 25–28: Cochem, Germany
- April 29–30: Reutte, Austria
- May 1: Salzburg, Austria
- May 2: Munich, Germany
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)